A retired bookbinder told me my stitching was too tight and it fixed everything

I was at a local bindery meetup in Portland last month and this old guy named Frank looked at my coptic stitch binding and said straight up 'you're pulling that thread way too hard, you're crushing the signatures.' Tbh I was kinda defensive at first because I thought tight stitching meant quality. But I tried his advice on my next project, a 200 page journal for a friend, and loosened up each stitch by about half the tension. The spine flexes way better now and the pages lie flat which is literally the whole point of coptic binding. Has anyone else gotten simple feedback that totally changed their technique? What was yours?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_karen3d ago

And here I thought I was building muscle, not crushing signatures. My last coptic bound book looked like it was trying to do a crunch, the spine was so tight it couldn't even lie flat on a table. Frank sounds like a hero, my wrists could use that advice.

anthony8832d ago

Bet you were pulling too hard on those stitches, @the_karen, tight spines are the only way to keep a book from falling apart.