I called bull on the Japanese stab binding being stronger than coptic, then I bound 12 books to test it

Seth Williams · 2026-09-25T11:05:04.450082+00:00

A guy at the Denver book arts meetup kept going on about stab binding holding up better than coptic for books that actually get used, and I sat there thinking it was total nonsense. My whole thing was coptic, sewn through the signatures, opens flat, looks great on a shelf. Stab binding to me was just that hole punched thing you do in a weekend class. So I grabbed scrap paper, linen thread, and book board and made 6 of each over about 3 weeks. Then I did the mean part, I opened every one of them 200 times and dropped half of them off my work table. The coptic ones started showing loose signatures around 150 opens. The stab ones barely moved, the spine just would not give. What sold me was drilling 4 holes instead of 2 and waxing the thread, that made a bigger difference than the pattern itself. I still bind coptic for journals I want to lay flat, but for anything that takes a beating I am going stab. Anyone here have a stitching pattern that beats both for heavy paper?

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I called bull on the Japanese stab binding being stronger than coptic, then I bound 12 books to test it | Bookbinders - SMM Buzz