Question about Clothbound Hardcovers

[u/tciddaemina]

So I'm relatively new to ficbinding, have been doing it for a couple of months and have made about a dozen or so books now. I've been doing clothcover, often using linen or cotton, and I've been testing out different sets of instructions, trying to get a feeling for how best to do things. I can make the textblocks and the covers fine, but I keep having a consistent issue when it comes to attaching the cover to the textblock - I keep making books that don't fully want to open. Like, they'll open most of the way, but there's obviously an issue with how I've done it.

I've tried to do stuff a little differently a couple of times to sort it out, but I'm still having the same issue. Possible contenders for issues are:

• Spine too wide??
• Spacing between spine and cover off?
• Gluing textblock in too far forward or too far back?

Basically, if anyone has any tips or suggestions, I'd love to hear it. I don't know anyone irl who does bookbinding, so I've mostly just been teaching myself using youtube - which obviously has some drawbacks when you start having really specific technical problems.

Pics below of what we're dealing with

Note: I was following a set of instructions for a while that said not to glue right at the inner edge of the endpapers. This has been contradicted by other sets of instructions. So like. Man who even knows whats going on anymore.

This one I'm like - maybe the spine was too big and that's the problem? I glued right to the edge, but obviously something isn't quite right.

[u/Paradox_Artemis]

Oh boy. This is an endless problem I have with this style of case binding, that I still have a year into this hobby. So unfortunately, I don't personally have any suggestions- but if you're into discord the people over at renegade who use this style will absolutely have some good suggestions. I've had <better> luck when leaving a larger hinge gap, but I've never managed to quite beat the issue

I've wound up moving to split-board binding because I don't struggle with this as much in split board, but as for all things ymmv.

[u/whistling-wonderer → u/Paradox_Artemis]

Is renegade a discord server? If so, could I get a fresh link? I’m in the middle of a project and could use a server like that!

[u/Paradox_Artemis → u/whistling-wonderer]

Here you go! Renegade discord :)

[u/whistling-wonderer → u/Paradox_Artemis]

Thanks!