Old bindery guy showed me a better way to glue spine linings

I've been doing bookbinding for about 4 years now, always using PVA glue straight from the bottle for spine linings like the tutorials said. Last month at a workshop in Portland, this retired guy named Frank watched me for 5 minutes and said 'you're making the paper pucker, thin it out with water.' I thought he was full of it, but I tried his 50/50 mix on my next binding and the mull laid flat as glass. Has anyone else found that certain glues work better watered down for specific steps?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray2102d ago

80% of my first year of binding was basically me slapping PVA on everything like a maniac and wondering why my spines looked like wrinkled laundry. I used to think Frank was some old coot until I tried watering down the PVA for lining paper and suddenly my books didn't look like they survived a flood. Now I keep a little squeeze bottle with 60/40 water to glue mixed up, specifically for spine linings and mull, and it's like night and day. I'm convinced the bookbinding YouTube guys are just trying to sell us glue stock or something.

gonzalez.phoenix1d ago

Had a buddy swear by mixing his PVA with a splash of methyl cellulose for spine work after his old teacher showed him, said it gave just enough tack without the paper going wavy. You ever play around with mixing other stuff in besides water?