Frustrated by all the tutorials gluing the spine before the text block is square
I have been binding books for about six years now and I keep seeing the same mistake in videos and posts online. People are gluing the spine before they square up the text block, and then they wonder why the fore edge is off by a few millimeters. I just fixed a friend's book from Tucson that had this exact problem, the spine was glued while the block was still uneven so the whole thing leaned. You need to knock the block square on a flat surface first, then clamp it tight, and only then start with the glue. If the block is not square, no amount of pressing later will fix it. Last week I spent 40 minutes tapping and re-tapping a block because I rushed the gluing step. How do you all clamp your blocks before gluing, do you use a press or just boards and weights?