Loading…
15
The bindery at the Milwaukee museum rebinds books with wheat paste and I watched them do it for 20 minutes
I was at the Milwaukee Public Museum two Saturdays ago and wandered into the back room where they run their own book repair shop, and I could not believe what I saw. The woman there was rebinding a 1890s ledger with wheat paste and Japanese tissue, not one drop of PVA anywhere on the bench. I asked her why and she said PVA dries hard and cracks in 30 years, while wheat paste stays flexible and can be undone with water if somebody needs to fix it later. Honestly it made me feel dumb for buying that $22 jug of acid free glue last month. Does anybody here actually run a wheat paste setup at home, and how do you deal with the mold risk in a humid basement?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
patricia31712d ago
Seems like the humidity thing might be less about the basement and more about airflow, since a lot of folks I know who use paste keep it in a tiny batch and use it up fast so it never sits long enough to go bad. Mold needs still air and food, so maybe storing the paste in the fridge between sessions solves most of it.
2