Full leather vs. cloth joint spines, I'll take cloth every time now after rebinding a 1902 encyclopedia set last month

The full leather looked beautiful but the cloth joints let the boards open flat without stress cracking after just six months of use, and I can replace a worn cloth joint in under an hour compared to cutting and paring new leather for a full day, has anyone else found that practical durability beats old-school aesthetics for functional books?

2 comments

2 Comments

mila_reed12d ago

Honestly, "under an hour" to replace a worn cloth joint? That's wild. I mean, I get the appeal of full leather too, but spending a full day just paring leather for a single joint sounds like a nightmare. I've only done a couple of cloth joints myself but it took me like three hours my first time. You must have that process down to a science.

brianm279d ago

My first cloth joint took me like four hours and I think I cut myself three times with the scalpel so you're doing fine. The trick is I do them in batches now when I have a few books needing work, I can knock out three or four joints in one afternoon once the glue and cloth are set up. I still mess up every now and then curving the spine and have to start over, which is always a good reminder I'm not as fast as I pretend to be. But yeah, practical wins for me every time when the book is meant to be handled regularly rather than sit pretty on a shelf.