I heard a binder say they only use paste for repairs, never glue, and it got me thinking

I was at a small book fair in Austin last weekend and overheard a conversation between two older binders. One of them was very firm, saying, 'For any repair on paper over fifty years old, I won't touch PVA. It's wheat paste or nothing.' I've always used a mix, but that strict rule stuck with me. I'm working on a 1920s poetry collection with some loose signatures right now, and I'm second-guessing my usual method. Has anyone else found that a paste-only approach works better for certain older materials, or is that more of a personal preference thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

susan8112d ago

That "wheat paste or nothing" rule is just old guard dogma. Modern PVA formulas are acid free and made for this. A good PVA is flexible, strong, and dries clear. Wheat paste can be a pain to mix right, it attracts pests, and it stays wet longer which can cause cockling on thin paper. For your 1920s book, a flexible PVA applied correctly will hold those signatures for another hundred years. Sticking only to paste ignores decades of good adhesive science.

shanec6112d ago

Funny you mention pests, @susan81. My uncle tried to re-bind his old fishing log with homemade wheat paste. Ended up with a family of silverfish using it for a condo. He switched to a pH-neutral PVA for the next one and it's held up fine, bugs lost interest.

smith.elliot12d agoMost Upvoted

But what about the long term? PVA might not yellow but it gets brittle with age, doesn't it? That wheat paste story is about a bad mix, not the glue itself. A proper cooked paste is still more reversible after decades, which matters if you ever need to fix the book later. Sometimes the old way is just more forgiving for a beginner who isn't working in a perfect lab.