Old binder at the shop showed me a trick for fixing warped covers

Last month I took a stack of old textbooks to a bindery in Portland to get the covers replaced. The guy running the place, probably 70 years old, watched me struggle with a warped board for a few minutes. He walked over and said "you need to wet the inside and clamp it flat for two hours before you glue anything." I had been trying to force it with weights and it never worked right. That one tip saved me three ruined covers and about $60 in wasted materials. Has anyone else gotten a simple fix from an older bookbinder that totally changed your method?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_eva2d ago

Wow, hold on a second. Two hours clamped? That sounds like overkill to me. I mean, I get that it works, but I've fixed plenty of warped boards just by leaving them under a stack of heavy books overnight. The old guy's method might be a little faster, sure, but it's not like you're going to ruin a cover if you just let it sit for ten or twelve hours instead. Maybe it's a bigger deal for really old, delicate stuff, but for regular textbooks like you're talking about? Seems like you could save an hour and a half of clamping time and still get the same result.

ryang771d ago

Funny you mention the heavy books thing. I once tried that with a paperback that had a nasty curve to the spine, stacked about fifteen pounds of old encyclopedias on it, and when I came back the next morning the cover had this weird crease right down the middle where the books must have shifted overnight. Your mileage may vary of course but that experience made me a little paranoid about leaving stuff unattended that long. The two hour clamp method feels more controlled to me, you can check on it halfway through and adjust if things look off. Plus if you are doing a bunch of books at once, you can just rotate them through the clamp and knock them out faster than waiting for overnight. Not saying your way is wrong, just different strokes for different folks.