Booklets Won't Lay Flat

[Justin M]

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?

 

[aqazi81]

What grain direction you are running?
Grain direction should be running parallel to the spine to let the book lay flat. There are other factors too.
Read this article, it will certainly help.
Bookmaking Part 3: Picking Paper And Grain Direction

 

[mwc]

If you have a hydraulic cutter, maybe try putting a stack of books in and use the clamp to compress the fold 'a little'.

 

[jotterpinky]

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.

 

[arossetti]

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.

 

[onwsk8r]

+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.