Industrial sewing machine at a library event split my binding philosophy in two

I was demoing stab binding at the downtown library's maker fair last month, and this older guy in a denim apron watched me jab holes for like 10 minutes. He then offered me his industrial sewing machine, the kind with the walking foot, to try sewing a text block instead of hand stitching. I was skeptical, real skeptical, because I've always felt hand sewing gives that soulful, human touch. But he loaded a 400 page block and ran it through in under 4 minutes, clean and tight. Now I'm stuck between the two camps: hand stitching for small batches, like my 3 or 4 custom journals a week, versus the machine for the bigger commission I keep turning down because it takes 15 hours. His point was, the reader never sees the thread, they feel the hinge, and the machine makes a better hinge. My old mentor would call that heresy. So, has anyone else switched from hand to machine sewing for certain jobs, or do you keep it all by hand no matter the time cost?

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finley_lane6229d ago

Does that walking foot actually know the paper grain like your fingers do, or is it just forcing the issue? I've seen what those machines do to the spine when the thread tension shifts mid-run, and it ain't pretty, you end up with a hinge that cracks in a year instead of lasting fifty. Hand sewing gives you the slack to adjust for every single fold, that's why old books survive, the machine just repeats the same mistake over and over faster. Your mentor's right to call it heresy, because the reader might not see the thread but they sure feel the difference when the binding stays flat or pops open. I get wanting to take that big commission, but you're trading your craft's soul for a paycheck and the machine will never learn the little quirks of the block. Stick with the needle, even if it takes all night, because that's what separates a real binder from a guy with a power cord.