I finally caught my rounding error on spines after 2 years

I always wondered why my book spines had this tiny wave at the top and bottom even though I thought I was rounding evenly. Last month at the Portland Guild meetup, this older binder named Carol watched me work for five minutes and just said "you're pulling the backing hammer toward you instead of letting it fall." She showed me how I was overcorrecting the curve and making it lopsided. Anyone else have a basic motion they did wrong for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim6931d ago

4 years of doing it wrong with a backing hammer and it was that simple of a fix? I'm with brown.gavin on the grip thing though, I keep a pretty firm hold on my bone folder and never had any gouging issues. Maybe some people just need to grip harder and push through instead of going soft handed.

hunt.quinn1d ago

Did letting the hammer drop actually fix it completely or did you find yourself having to adjust other parts of your technique too? I'm curious if it was one simple fix or if it opened up a whole new set of problems.

brown.gavin1d ago

Man, the backing hammer thing hit home hard. For me it was how I was holding the bone folder when paring leather. I had a death grip on it and was scraping instead of gliding, which left these tiny gouges I'd have to sand out later. An old timer at my shop just handed me the folder loosely and said "let the tool do the work, you're just guiding it." Took me a solid six months of consciously relaxing my hand before it felt natural. What finally clicked was humming while I worked to keep my grip light.