Spent three whole days trying to get a single piece of endpaper to lay flat

I was binding a small poetry book and the paste just kept making the paper bubble up... no matter how much I smoothed it. I tried different glue, different paper weight, even a bone folder I heated slightly. My partner walked in and said the room looked like a paper crime scene. Has anyone else had a simple step turn into a multi-day fight with materials?

3 comments

3 Comments

lily9726d ago

Three days? Been there, did the paper crime scene thing with a batch of hand-dyed lokta. @willow_ellis I gotta push back on the slap-and-go thing though, endpapers warp like crazy if you don't let them breathe first. Try brushing on a thin paste, waiting 30 seconds, then laying it down with a plastic scraper - that fixed my bubbling issues almost immediately.

black.amy1mo ago

Ugh endpapers are the worst for that. Try pasting the paper first and letting it sit for a minute to expand before you stick it to the cover board. A light spray of water from a mister on the back before pasting can help too, it relaxes the fibers. I keep a clean brick wrapped in cloth to use as a weight after I get it positioned, leave it for a good hour. Sometimes the paper just needs to stretch out on its own time before you commit.

willow_ellis1mo ago

Let it sit for a minute to expand" lol, it's just paper and glue, not a science project. I just slap it on and close the book under some heavy cookbooks for a while, never had a multi-day fight over it. Maybe the paste is too wet or something.

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