Had a week where every signature sheet came back wrong

Last Tuesday I was finishing up a run of 40 journals for a local shop in Spokane. I had 3 sheets in a row where the signature lines were off by like half an inch after folding. Took me an extra 2 hours to redo those sections and realign the thread holes. Then Thursday I caught a bad batch of book cloth that was peeling at the edge before I even glued it down. Whole week felt like I was fighting the materials instead of working with them. Has anyone else hit a stretch where nothing seems to go right with the materials themselves?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_mary8d ago

Read somewhere that paper mills have been having trouble sourcing quality cotton linters for bookbinding paper since those big floods in Pakistan last year. Maybe that's why your signatures were acting up. Saw a bindery in Portland complaining about the same thing with their endpaper stock last month. Could be a supply chain thing working its way down to us little guys.

paige_bell818d ago

The Portland bindery issue sounds more like their supplier cheaped out on stock, not a flood problem.

casey2688d ago

Totally feel for you, dealing with those paper gremlins in the middle of a project. That Pakistan flood thing hit the cotton linter supply harder than most people realize, it's been a quiet headache for a lot of smaller shops. Hope your supplier gets their stock sorted soon, it's rough when your endpapers just won't cooperate.