I finally finished a full leather spine after six tries

I've been messing with bookbinding for about two years now, mostly cloth covers, but leather always scared me off. Last Wednesday I spent 8 hours in my shop and actually got a clean paring on the spine piece with no tears or weird lumps. Has anyone else hit a milestone that took way longer than you expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucast818h ago

Tbh that leather spine on the sixth try sounds like a huge win. I spent like a whole year just trying to get a flat lay flat on a coptic stitch book and it took me maybe ten attempts before it didn't look like a sad taco. Congrats on that paring being clean, that's the part that always gets me too with the tearing.

jenny_lee6h ago

And here I was proud of myself for not crying after my third leather spine attempt, so yeah @lucast81 is right about that paring being the real boss fight. The fact that you stuck it out through six tries says more about your patience than mine, which ran out somewhere around the four-hour mark. What's the next leather project you're scared to start but probably will anyway?

stella224h ago

And that part about the paring being the boss fight, yeah that's it exactly. I had this one piece of goat leather that just kept shredding no matter how much I adjusted the blade angle, spent a whole weekend just practicing on scraps before I figured out it was too dry and needed a light misting. The patience thing is funny because I'm normally the type to rage quit anything, but there's something about that final moment when the spine goes on smooth that makes all the failed tries worth it.