My worst binding day ever was a string of 3 broken spines in 4 hours

I was working on a 400-page fiction rebind last Tuesday and somehow cracked the spine on three copies in a row because my homemade wheat paste was too thin. Has anyone else had a specific paste consistency wreck an entire batch of books?

3 comments

3 Comments

finleyl398d ago

Oh man, I feel your pain on that one. Last fall I was trying to rebind a 600 page fantasy novel and I mixed my paste way too thin three times in a row. It was like the spine just wouldn't hold and the book would crack open the first time I even looked at it wrong. I finally realized I was adding way too much water because I was rushing and not letting it cook long enough. By the time I got the consistency right I had wasted almost $40 in book cloth and paper. It's such a specific kind of frustration when you think you've got your paste dialed in and then it betrays you like that.

riverh498d ago

Had a buddy go through something similar last year @finleyl39, you're not alone. He was working on a 400 page cookbook and kept getting frustrated that his paste was more like soup than glue. Turns out he was measuring the flour by volume instead of weight, and it threw the whole ratio off. He burned through a whole roll of jade paper before he figured it out.

amy_west8d ago

Three cracked spines in four hours is rough, but honestly I think you might be overthinking the paste consistency. I've been using the same basic wheat paste recipe for years and I've never had a batch fail like that because of thickness alone. My guess is the paper or mull you're using might be the real problem, not the paste.