Booklets Won't Lay Flat

Justin M

Active member
Please help! I new to printing booklets and I'm having a little trouble with them staying flat.

I'm currently printing a booklet that's 8.5" tall by 6" wide. The cover is printed on 120LB Gloss Cover with a ~2mil soft touch lamination. There are 6 inside sheets that were printed on 100LB gloss text. I currently don't have a booklet maker so I just scored them, and then folded and stapled them by hand. Currently they are not laying flat and the booklet just seems to spring open. How can I get the booklet to remain flat?
 
If you have a hydraulic cutter, maybe try putting a stack of books in and use the clamp to compress the fold 'a little'.
 
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what I like to do on some of these that are really thick is to make TWO scores so it folds with a bit of a square edge...usually about 1-1.5mm apart at the spine area.
 
what I like to do on some of these that are really thick is to make TWO scores so it folds with a bit of a square edge...usually about 1-1.5mm apart at the spine area.

Right, you can try to make a square back by creating 2 scores for the book block and 2 additional scores for hinges.
 
+1 for the hydraulic cutter solution - that tends to work pretty well. If you don't have a hydraulic cutter, just set a case of paper on them overnight. It won't do much, but it will help a bit.
Small booklet makers don't do a very good job of getting books to lay flat (with the exception of some of the online ones - those are crazy good) anyways - don't feel bad.

How many pages and what are the guts printed on? I've found that different jobs often require different hacks.
 

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