Overheard a librarian mention grain direction at a coffee shop

I was grabbing a coffee last Saturday and this librarian was telling her friend about how she ruined a repair by ignoring the grain direction on some book cloth. She said she had to redo a whole binding job because the material curled after a week. It hit me that I do the same thing sometimes with my endpapers, just grabbing whatever board I have without checking. So I went home and checked my last three projects and two of them had the grain wrong on the spine piece. Has anyone else had problems from not paying attention to grain direction?

3 comments

3 Comments

david_palmer17d ago

...so I used to work in a print shop back in the 90s and we had this ancient guillotine cutter that would jam if you fed the paper grain wrong. The owner swore you could hear it groan like it was in pain. Got so bad we'd spin the paper around just to shut it up. Never thought about books doing the same thing until I messed up a paperback repair last fall. Board curled up like a potato chip and I had to peel it off and start over. Felt pretty dumb since I knew better from my old job.

michael_williams17d ago

Funny how something you learned years ago just comes back to bite you like that...

ivan46217d ago

Took me way too long to learn this lesson, @david_palmer. I used to think grain was just for paper snobs but after my last book's cover split down the middle I changed my mind real fast.