One A5 sketchbook, 120 pages of 160gsm mixed media paper, about 40 pounds for everything including tools. It has to open dead flat so I can draw across the spread. I keep going back and forth between coptic and a long stitch over a soft cover, mostly because I can't tell which will be less punishing on a first attempt.
Different vote: long stitch. 160gsm is thick, so a coptic means a lot of sections, a lot of holes and a long fiddly sewing session that's easy to abandon halfway. Long stitch is one continuous line, you see mistakes as you make them, and it opens flat enough to draw across if you keep signatures thin. Three folded sheets per signature, not six.
Fair, and the thin-signature point holds either way. With 160gsm anything over four folded sheets gives you a creased inner spread.
Whichever you pick, spend the money on the awl and the thread rather than the board. A cheap awl wanders off your punching line and you'll fight crooked holes forever. The bone folder can be a cheap plastic one to start.
Punch through a template, never freehand. Fold a strip of card, mark the stations once, use it for every section. Uneven station spacing is the number one reason a first coptic ends up skewed.
@coptic_cleo · 4mo ago · 3 replies
Coptic, purely for the flat-open requirement. It's the only one of the two that genuinely opens 180 degrees and stays there under a hand. Long stitch opens well but the cover wants to close and heavy mixed media paper makes that worse.
Budget is fine too. Waxed linen thread, a few needles, an awl, a bone folder and two bits of board is under 25 pounds if you cut the boards from a cereal box for the prototype and buy proper board once you know what you're doing.
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@abd_avery · 4mo ago
Do at least two prototypes. Everyone's first coptic looks like a disaster and it's much less painful when it cost 20p.
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@solder_sundays · 4mo ago
Prototyping with cereal box is obvious in hindsight and I hadn't thought of it. Doing that first.
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