Blew through 8 bookbinding needles before I realized my punching angle was off

I've been binding books for about 2 years now and always struggled with needles snapping mid-sew. Thought it was just cheap needles or bad luck lol. Then a guy at a workshop in Portland watched me for 5 minutes and asked why I was punching at a 45-degree angle instead of straight down. Turns out I saw that technique in a YouTube video and never questioned it. After he showed me the right way, I haven't broken a single needle in 3 months. Am I the only one who picked up a bad habit from a tutorial and just ran with it forever? What was your moment where someone had to point out you were doing something basic completely backward?

3 comments

3 Comments

milaw1414d ago

Watched a sewing video that had the needle in backward, did that for six months.

young.nora14d agoMost Upvoted

Has anyone else ever had that moment where you realize you've been doing something basic wrong for months and just feel so DUMB? I once spent a whole summer slicing vegetables with the knife blade facing toward my thumb because I saw a cooking clip that showed it that way and thought "hey, this must be the pro technique!" @milaw14 at least your sewing will get SO much easier now that you've got the needle right!

nancy81714d ago

Get so many bits of bad info from tutorials these days, people just copy what they see without double-checking the basics first. It's like that whole trend of influencers giving terrible life advice just because they got lucky with one thing working for them. Really makes you wonder how much other stuff out there is just flat wrong and nobody catches it.