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Sat through a 3 hour workshop at the Portland Book Arts Center and learned I've been casing in all wrong
I went to a workshop at the Portland Book Arts Center two Saturdays ago, mostly because a friend talked me into it and I figured I'd just pick up a tip or two. The instructor was this older guy named Ray who has been binding for almost 40 years, and he spent the whole first hour just watching us case in our text blocks. About halfway through he stopped at my bench and asked why I was pressing the spine down so hard before gluing the endpapers. I told him that's how I always did it, and he showed me that I was basically pushing the boards out of square every single time without even noticing. He had me do it his way, just a light touch and letting the weight of the block do the work, and the difference in how the book opened was honestly kind of shocking. Now I'm going back through three finished books I made this spring to see if they have the same problem, and two of them do. Has anyone else had a moment where a teacher caught something in your technique that you'd been doing wrong for years?
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miller.avery16d ago
Is pressing too hard really the reason the boards went out of square, or was something off earlier in the process like the grain direction or how the block sat while drying? I've seen books that were pressed way too hard still open fine, and books done with a light touch that ended up warped anyway, so it kind of depends on the paper and the glue and the humidity that day. Not saying Ray is wrong, he's clearly got the years behind him, but one workshop observation on one book doesn't always mean the whole method was bad for years. I'd check those two spring books again after they sit a few more weeks, sometimes stuff settles and looks different. Your mileage may vary but I wouldn't toss out everything you know over one Saturday.
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