Unpopular opinion: I was wrong about using a bone folder for everything

Honestly, I used a bone folder for every single fold for like two years. A client in Tacoma brought me a book to fix last month, and the paper was all creased and cracked along the spine. She asked if I'd used too much pressure, and that was the lightbulb moment. I tried a teflon folder on some scrap and the difference was huge, way smoother. Has anyone else switched tools for different paper types?

3 comments

3 Comments

claire_ramirez222mo ago

Two years of using the same tool on everything? That's wild to me. You must have gone through so much paper before the Tacoma client showed up. I can picture the cracked spine, that's a total nightmare for a book repair. Makes me wonder what else we're all doing wrong without realizing it.

spencer_ross2mo ago

That "cracked spine" line got me. Reminds me of a guy at a flea market last year. He had a whole table of old cookbooks, all with the same weird bend in the covers. Turns out he stored them flat in a plastic tub with a brick on top to "keep them flat." Had been doing it for a decade. Sometimes you just get stuck in a method and never question it until you see the damage pile up.

julia28619d ago

Maybe the guy just knew what he liked and stuck with it. People act like consistency is this horrible flaw but plenty of old school bookbinders used one tool for everything and their work held up fine. I've seen restorations that lasted 50+ years done with a single bone folder and some paste. If the Tacoma client forced him to change methods maybe the client was the one with the problem not his techniques. Sometimes we overthink this stuff and start fixing things that aren't broken just because someone new comes along with a different opinion.