Historically, a variety of materials were used for what we now generically call “bone folders”. Wood folders have largely gone out of favor, but I was made a series of historic reproductions and started to appreciate their unique qualities.

At least in English binding tradition, wood seems to have been the most common. Why?

It turns out that for leather manipulation, wood sticks to the leather better than bone, or plastics, for that matter. This stickiness is not ideal for smoothing operations on cloth, for example, but is ideal for manipulating leather when covering, since it can stick to the leather and pull it to where you want it without marking. This property is ideal forming headcaps.

Boxwood is incredibly smooth to the touch., with little discernable grain. This folder was specifically designed for forming headcaps: the thin flat area for turning in leather on the inner face of the boards when covering, this same flat area can be used for tapping headcaps, pressing corners, smoothing edges of boards, etc. The pointy end fits into the backcornering, and can be used from the opposite direction for forming headcap ears.

Boxwood is a rare wood that can take a hundred years of more to grow, so I use the piece with as little waste as possible. So the folders are all slightly different shapes and lengths, though they all have the essential aspects in the diagram. And they all work very well. If they get saturated with paste or leather dyes, simply dampen them and scrub with a green nylon scouring pad.

Boxwood, roughly 125-150mm long, around 15mm wide, .5mm on one end to around 4mm thickness maximum. One stick per order.