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Watched a bookbinder in Savannah fix a spine with a hair dryer and I've been doing it wrong for 6 years
I went to a small book arts meetup in Savannah back in March and sat in on a repair demo, mostly to be polite. The woman teaching it had a cheap travel hair dryer and used it to soften old hide glue on a 1920s ledger so the spine came off in one piece instead of cracking. I had been soaking spines in a damp towel for years, which always warped the boards a little. I tried the hair dryer on a cheap 1940s dictionary when I got home and the whole cover lifted clean in about 4 minutes. Does anyone else use heat instead of moisture, and how do you keep from scorching the cloth?
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gray_roberts11d ago
Soaking in damp towels always warps boards, hair dryer is the move.
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