SmithFinisher
Member
As I've seen it, most paper is long grain. So, a 28x40" inch press sheet will have the grain direction running in the 40 inch. Given a 8.5 x 11 final product size (or similar), when folding this down to a standard 16 page cross section fold, the signature ends up being cross grain. This doesn't work especially for Perfect Binding. So, what do you do? From what I understand, 16 page signatures are the norm but with this situation I feel there must be a common solution since getting paper short grain is basically a custom order.
What we've done for now is done an 18 page siganture which does utilize more paper but because of the design elements has become a pain to execute straight border lines. For the folder: in station one is a Z fold and then going to the cross section its a roll fold. When laying the sheet flat, the pages that are in all of the corners (4 corners to the sheet obviously) are subject to pushout in different directions making it seemingly impossible to get all of the bordered lines straight.
On design critical jobs like this we would ideally opt to use 8 page double parallel folds to avoid this oblique pushout but can't because it's a perfect bound job that would wind up cross grain. I've never seen software that can compensate for this oblique pushout and have only seen it move the image straight in or out depending on the fold configuration. This leaves me a bit lost on how this should be properly executed.
With all of that, I'd like to hear what others have done in this situation. Do you just bind cross grain? Fold a lot of 4 page signatures? Would love to hear any advice.
What we've done for now is done an 18 page siganture which does utilize more paper but because of the design elements has become a pain to execute straight border lines. For the folder: in station one is a Z fold and then going to the cross section its a roll fold. When laying the sheet flat, the pages that are in all of the corners (4 corners to the sheet obviously) are subject to pushout in different directions making it seemingly impossible to get all of the bordered lines straight.
On design critical jobs like this we would ideally opt to use 8 page double parallel folds to avoid this oblique pushout but can't because it's a perfect bound job that would wind up cross grain. I've never seen software that can compensate for this oblique pushout and have only seen it move the image straight in or out depending on the fold configuration. This leaves me a bit lost on how this should be properly executed.
With all of that, I'd like to hear what others have done in this situation. Do you just bind cross grain? Fold a lot of 4 page signatures? Would love to hear any advice.
