Saw a guy at a bookbinding guild meetup in Portland use a wallpaper seam roller instead of a bone folder

I watched him work through an entire case binding with it and the paper was laying completely flat with no crease marks. Has anyone else tried this or is there a reason we all stick to bone folders?

4 comments

4 Comments

joseph_bailey13d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, he used a wallpaper roller on book cloth and it didn't leave any marks at all? I would've thought the pressure would crush the grain or leave shiny spots... I mean, seam rollers have that heavy metal wheel, right? Guess I need to try this on my next pamphlet stitch before I knock it.

emma_lee2213d agoTop Commenter

Oh come on, you're way overthinking this. Book cloth is tough stuff, it's not some delicate flower that's going to get ruined by a little roller pressure. I've used a wallpaper roller on book cloth a bunch of times and never once had it leave marks or shiny spots. The key is you're not leaning into it like you're trying to flatten a bowling ball, you're just smoothing things down gently. A seam roller is heavy and metal, yeah, but a wallpaper roller is softer and has that big surface area so the pressure spreads out way more. You could probably crush the living daylights out of a pamphlet with a seam roller before you'd mess it up with a wallpaper one.

max_schmidt7713d ago

Yeah nah I get where @emma_lee22 is coming from. Actually reminds me of this time I was helping a friend rebind an old textbook and he grabbed a rolling pin from the kitchen instead of a proper roller. Thought it was hilarious until the thing left weird dust and tiny dents all over the buckram. Had to peel the whole cover and start over. So yeah wallpaper roller probably works fine if you're gentle. But I'd still test it on a scrap piece first. Learned that lesson the hard way.

garcia.cameron9d ago

That idea about testing on scrap definitely saved me from wrecking a project too, your mileage may vary with cloth thickness.