What is ...Round Cornering?



What is ...Number 10

Regular followers of this blog will know that in the middle of the month, I publish a "What is ....? post. The article covers various aspects of paper, printing and finishing in greater depth. However, many of these subjects are complex, so these posts are only intended to be a brief introduction to the topic.

What is ...Round Cornering?

Round cornering is a print finishing process which does "exactly what it says on the tin"TM! As you can see from the image below, the book has been 'round cornered'

Common examples of round cornering are books and invitations. Below is a hand round cornering machine - it's the one we have in our sample room - so, yes, we can even do round cornered dummies and samples!

The way it works is a right angled sharp blade, called a cutter is brought down under pressure and it literally 'shaves' off the square corner in one easy movement, cutting a radius corner. Just to give you a sense of scale, the book in the picture above and below is A5. The effect is both aesthetically pleasing and unlike square corners is less easily caught and creased.

Round cornering can also be used on casebound books and normally the cover is also round cornered, although the case (cover) normally protrudes outside, as below:

It's also quite commonly used on invitations. Below is an invitation for Marte Marce at Riflemaker which was printed on Flockage Litho 300gsm and round cornered - works beautifully with the image, design and material. Printed and finished by Generation Press.

One thing that readers may not be aware of is that there are different radius cutters available, so it is possible to have a tight radius or a shallower cut, as demonstrated in the pictures below: 

It is true to say that this is a 'print-finishing' process which very few printers have available in house and is normally put out to trade finishers. The above example is a hand finishing piece of equipment, but "serious" or heavy duty finishing is done by larger mechanical presses, such as this one:  

http://www.chilvers.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=43

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.10.2014