That moment the spine glue failed on a 40-year-old repair

I was in my basement workshop in Cleveland last spring, working on a family Bible from 1983. The old spine was barely hanging on, so I decided to reback it with fresh glue and a new cloth. I thought I had the temperature right on my glue pot, but about ten minutes after I pressed it, the whole spine just peeled off like a bad sticker. Turns out the old adhesive was animal glue and my new PVA wasn't bonding to it at all. I had to scrape every bit of that old residue off with a bone folder and a heat gun, which took the better part of an afternoon. Then I switched to a reversible wheat paste mix and it finally held. Has anyone else run into a mismatch like that where the old glue just refuses to cooperate with modern stuff?

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price.ray1mo ago

...and honestly I think that old animal glue was doing you a FAVOR by peeling off. You scraped it clean and went with wheat paste, which is exactly what that Bible needed. If your PVA had stuck to that crusty old glue, you would have created a Frankenstein bond that fails in five years instead of forty. Sometimes the old stuff refusing to cooperate is the universe telling you to do it RIGHT the first time. Ive seen people slap new glue over old and end up with a book that falls apart worse than before.

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angelarivera1mo ago

That old glue not bonding sounds a lot like how some people just won't get along, no matter how hard you try.

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