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Showerthought: I dropped $75 on a corner rounder and now I just use a sanding block and a dime
Bought a fancy corner rounder from a supplier in Portland 3 months ago thinking it would clean up my board books. First batch, the blade chewed a corner because the guide slipped, ruined a $12 piece of book board. Then I looked up the old method and a guy at my local bindery in Boise showed me you can wrap sandpaper around a coin and get the same radius in about 10 seconds. So now the $75 thing sits in a drawer and I'm out the cash plus the board I wrecked. Has anyone else bought a tool that turned out to be a $75 paperweight, and what did you swap it for?
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lindab499d ago
The dime trick works but nobody talks about matching the radius to your board thickness, and that is where the real money gets saved. A dime gives you about a 9mm curve, which looks great on a 2mm board but looks weird and stubby on anything over 4mm. I keep three coins taped to a paint stick, a penny, a nickel, and a quarter, so I can pick the curve that matches whatever I am binding that week. The other thing people miss is that a sanding block with a fresh piece of 220 tears through book board fast, so you have to count strokes or you end up with a lopsided corner just like your guide slip did. My $60 rounder has been in the bottom drawer since 2019 and the coins have never once chewed a corner.
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