I think everyone is way too obsessed with grain direction on endpapers

I have bound maybe 80 books over the last 3 years and only had one endpaper buckle, and that was because I used too much glue. Does the paper grain really make that big a difference for most projects or is it just something we tell ourselves to feel professional?

3 comments

3 Comments

olivia57324d ago

Hasn't everyone made a book where the endpapers looked like they went through a wash cycle and called it "character"? I used to be so casual about grain direction until I made a batch of journals with the grain going every which way and they all curled up like dead leaves in the fall. Now I'm that person who obsessively checks the grain on every single sheet, but honestly I think it's like making sure your tires are inflated properly. You can get away with it being off for a while, but eventually it'll bite you in the backside. Better to just do it right the first time and save yourself the headache of trying to flatten a warped endpaper later.

daniel_martinez8424d ago

The "dead leaves in the fall" part hit home. I had a whole batch of sketchbooks do that exact thing a few years back. Ended up stacking them under a pile of textbooks for a week and it mostly fixed them, but the paper still feels wrong when you flip through. Now I treat grain direction like packing a cooler for a road trip. Takes an extra minute to get it right, but it saves you from soggy sandwiches and warped books later.

the_tara22d ago

@olivia573 respectfully, i gotta disagree here. grain direction is one of those things that hobbyists overthink while the actual magic of bookbinding is in the creative choices you make. some of my favorite books have a little curve to them because i used what i had on hand. honestly the whole tire inflation comparison is a stretch because a warped book still works fine for 99% of people who will ever see it. you only notice that stuff when you're staring at your own work under a desk lamp at 2am. saving an extra 30 seconds per sheet adds up when you're cranking out 20 books in a weekend, and nobody has ever returned one of my journals because the grain was technically wrong.