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Found out a hardcover spine gets glued twice and I never noticed in 4 years of binding
I was flipping through a 1962 library binding manual at a used book sale in Akron last month and saw a line about "double gluing" the spine. Turns out a lot of production shops glue the spine once, let it dry, then glue it again before casing in. The second pass fills the little gaps the first coat leaves when it soaks into the paper. I tried it on three rebinds after that and the hinges felt stiffer but they opened smoother, if that makes sense. My first attempt was a mess though because I let the first coat dry too long and the second coat just sat on top. Anybody here do a double glue on every book or only on thicker signatures?
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leor861mo ago
So you read one line in a 1962 manual and now the whole craft is doing it wrong? Plenty of shops glue once and those books hold up for decades. The double glue thing sounds like a fix for a specific problem, not some secret everyone missed. If your first attempt turned into a mess because the coat dried too long, that tells me the timing is finicky and not worth the hassle on every book. I would save it for thick signatures or cheap paper that drinks up glue, not make it a rule.
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