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Question about the time I had to pick between two cover materials and picked wrong, obviously
So last weekend I was rebinding a beat up copy of The Hobbit for a friend's birthday, and I had to choose between going with a classic book cloth in forest green or splurging on a half yard of vegetable tanned goat leather from a shop in Portland. I went with the leather because it felt fancier, and I figured my friend would be impressed. Big mistake. The leather was way too thick for the spine, and when I tried to fold it around the boards it bunched up like a cheap rug. I ended up ripping out the whole spine and redoing it with the book cloth anyway, which cost me three evenings and one very sharp paring knife slice on my thumb. Now the book looks fine, but every time I open it I see that tiny wobble in the hinge where the leather fought me. Has anyone else gone for the fancy material and regretted it, or is it just me?
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jordan3301d ago
Learned that same lesson with a goatskin bible I rebound, and it was the grain direction that got me. The leather had almost no stretch along the spine, so every time I opened the cover it pulled against the hinge and left that same little wave you are talking about. Next time try skiving the leather down to half its thickness right where it wraps the spine, and glue it up with a thin layer of wheat paste instead of PVA so it slides a bit before it grabs. The wobble never fully goes away once the boards have warped, but trimming the leather thin at the joint keeps it from happening again.
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