Showerthought: I swore round backing with a bone folder was wasted effort until a repair job in Providence proved me wrong

William Torres · 2026-10-30T17:20:06.20981+00:00

For a long time I thought the old timers pushing bone folder work were just being picky. I mean, if the glue holds and the spine sits flat, who cares how the fold feels, right? So when a lady dropped off a 1930s family Bible at my bench in Providence back in March, I did my usual fast job on the joints and called it done. Two weeks later she brought it back because the hinge was already cracking and the pages were pulling loose near the gutter. A guy named Sal who runs a bindery up in Pawtucket took a look and showed me that my folds were too sharp and the paper needed room to move. He sat with me for maybe 40 minutes and made me redo the backing with light passes, letting the bone folder round the shoulders instead of crushing them. That book has held up through two more repairs since and the joints look better than when it came in. Now I want to know if anyone here still skips the rounding step on quick repairs, and if so, how do you keep the hinge from failing later on?

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Showerthought: I swore round backing with a bone folder was wasted effort until a repair job in Providence proved me wrong | Bookbinders - Chatter Central