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A retired binder in Portland warned me about PVA glue acidity, I brushed him off
Last month I was at a used book fair in Portland, OR and this older guy, Jim, saw me repairing a paperback with standard PVA. He told me that some cheap PVA brands turn acidic after 10 years and eat through linen. I thought he was just being dramatic, but he showed me a 1970s rebind with brittle, burnt-looking hinges. Now I test every glue batch with pH strips, costs about $8 for 100 strips. Has anyone else had a glue fail years later, or is Jim just a perfectionist?
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alice_allen52mo ago
Started telling my buddy Mike about this at his shop and he got this look on his face. He repairs old cookbooks and had a batch of church cookbooks he fixed up back in 2015 with some off brand PVA from a hardware store. Around year eight, the spines just crumbled when people opened them, pages fell out like dry leaves. He pulled one apart and the glue had turned this weird brownish color, smelled sour too. He still has a box of those ruined books in his garage, calls it his glue graveyard. So yeah, Jim might be picky, but Mike's got the scars to prove it.
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