A retired librarian in Austin made me rethink my hinge setup

Last Saturday a guy came into the shop and saw me wrestling with a text block that kept pulling away from the spine. He was probably 70, looked like he'd been binding since before I was born. He watched for a minute and said, 'You're fighting the grain, not the glue.' Then he showed me how he checks grain direction by curling the paper corner before cutting. I'd been doing it the same way for 5 years, never once thought about grain on a hinge. Spent the next hour re-cutting two signatures and the difference was night and day. Has anyone else had a random stranger drop a basic tip that blew your whole process open?

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