anthony_wells•22d agoMost Upvoted

A 6am binding demo in Portland fixed my hinge problem

Went to a book arts meetup last month. Older guy named Carl was doing a flat-back case binding. My spines always crack at the hinge. He pushed me to try a linen hinge strip with PVA, not just paste. Worked on my next three journals. No cracking. Never thought a 45 minute demo would beat 8 years of trial and error. Anyone else pick up a trick from a random demo instead of a class?

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wendy_murphy1622d ago

Wait, is that the trick where the hinge strip goes all the way under the spine piece? Cause I tried that once but with wheat paste and it still cracked. Honestly, I think PVA is the magic part here, not just the linen. I've been using plain paste for years and my joints always fail, but now I'm wondering if I should just switch everything over to PVA for case bindings. Carl sounds like he knows his stuff, sometimes the old guys at these meetups have the best shortcuts nobody writes about. I might hit up a demo myself just to steal more tips like this.