Spent a whole weekend trying to get my head around a French groove

I was binding a small journal and the groove just wouldn't form cleanly, always tearing the covering material. It took me three days of fiddling with bone folder pressure and board thickness to get it right. What's your method for a crisp, clean groove?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth_butler753mo ago

Remember trying to get a clean score line on some handmade cards last year, used way too much water in the paste and warped the whole sheet. Ended up switching to a dull butter knife for pressure, which was a weird fix but it worked. Sometimes the groove just fights you until you find that one weird trick.

dylan2653mo ago

Totally get that struggle with weird fixes. I once used a plastic library card for scoring when my bone folder went missing. It's funny how the best tools are often just random stuff already on your desk.

dakotaknight1mo ago

Hold on, I'm going to have to disagree here. I think people make this way too complicated with all these "tricks" and weird fixes. You're supposed to just use the right pressure from the start and move on. If your bone folder isn't doing its job, you're either pressing too hard or not hard enough, there's no middle ground with butter knives and library cards. Scraping and scoring with random junk just introduces more variables and makes your groove look sloppy in my experience. Honestly, three days of fiddling sounds like overthinking it. Sometimes the simplest method with the actual correct tool is the only way to get a clean line.