Took me twenty years to realize I was stitching my spines backwards

I was at a workshop in Portland last spring and a younger binder glanced at my work and asked why my spine piece was facing the wrong grain direction. I had been doing it the same way since 2003. Nobody ever said anything before. Has anyone else had a basic technique flipped on them after decades?

3 comments

3 Comments

nguyen.tara21d ago

The grain thing is one of those details that gets passed around more in formal workshops than in mentor setups. But the real issue is how long it takes for someone to catch a mistake that's been hiding in plain sight. To me that says more about how isolated the craft can be than about the mistake itself. A lot of us learn from one person or one book and never question it again. Maybe the bigger lesson here is that bookbinding needs more open critique and less of a "you do you" attitude. Just because nobody said anything doesn't mean it was right.

graceblack20d ago

Wait, you're telling me the grain direction actually matters that much? I would have thought it was just some old timer superstition like tapping the spine three times before finishing. I've been flipping my spines the same way for fifteen years and never had a book fall apart on me. Makes me wonder how many other little things I'm doing dead wrong that nobody bothered to mention.

cooper.phoenix20d ago

My first workshop teacher drilled grain direction into my skull so hard I still hear her voice every time I pick up a piece of paper. She literally made us hold a sheet up to the light and bend it different ways until we could feel the difference blindfolded. I remember screwing it up on my first few projects and having the covers warp like potato chips after a week in the shop. Fifteen years without a failure is honestly impressive though but I bet you just got lucky with the materials you were using or the way you store your books. The fact that nobody told you for that long just proves how many weird gaps there are in how this stuff gets taught.