Visited a bindery in Portland and changed my whole approach to endpapers

I stopped by this small shop called Cedar Bindery off of SE Grand last Saturday just to grab some book cloth, and the owner let me watch her put in endpapers on a run of journals. She was using a paper I wouldve called too flimsy for the job, something like a 60 lb texture stock, and I told her so. She laughed and said the flex was the point, that stiff endpapers cause hinge stress every time. She showed me a 3 year old journal she made the same way and the joint was still perfect, no cracking at all. That got me thinking about the 20 or so rebinds I did last fall with heavy cardstock and how a couple of them already feel tight. I switched to a lighter cotton blend for my last 3 projects and the covers close so much nicer. Has anyone else played around with lighter endpaper weights, or am I just late to this party?

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max_ramirez4813d ago

Wait, is that actually true though? I mean, the hinge stress part sounds right, but 60 lb stock for endpapers seems like it would tear at the joint after a few hundred opens, not just flex. I did a batch of sketchbooks last spring with 65 lb text and the first one started pulling away from the spine within a month, just from normal use. Maybe the difference is the cotton blend versus plain wood pulp, because my failure was on a cheap smooth stock, not a textured cotton one. But I'd double check that 3 year old journal before I switched everything over, because one sample isn't a pattern. Lightweight works great for some things, but I'd still use something around 80 lb for anything that gets heavy handling.