Used to fold signatures by eye until a guy in Billings showed me the bone folder trick
For 2 years I just creased each signature with my thumbnail, then last month a retired binder at a supply shop in Billings, Montana showed me how to run a bone folder along a straightedge first, and now every signature folds flat with no cracking at the spine, so what small tool habit did you pick up way too late?
Watched a video from a bookbinder in Ohio who said the same thing about bone folders, that you should always score the fold first with a straightedge instead of just pressing it down. I tried it on a batch of chapbooks last year and the difference was night and day, no more cracked spines on the heavier stock. Before that I was doing the thumb crease thing too and wondering why my text blocks looked rough. It is one of those tips that takes two minutes to learn but nobody tells you until you have already wrecked a bunch of paper.