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Talking to a retired bookbinder changed how I think about glue
I ran into an old guy at the county library book sale last Saturday. He started chatting while I was flipping through a stack of old Readers Digests. Turns out he worked at a bindery in Philadelphia for 40 years. He saw my fingers and asked was I a binder. When I told him I use PVA for almost everything, he just shook his head. He said modern binders lean too hard on glue that gives up after 20 years and we should be using animal hide glue for anything that needs to last a century. It hit me because I had never even thought about longevity past my own lifetime. He was direct about it too, said we are making books for a generation, not for history. Has anyone else had an old timer change their mind on materials like that?
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paulnguyen9d ago
Honestly PVA is cheaper and easier and not everyone is trying to build a museum piece.
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And that's the thing, right? I had a similar moment with an old painter who told me nobody primes their trim anymore, just throws paint on raw wood and hopes for the best. He showed me this beat up rocking chair his granddad made in the 40s that still had its original finish. I guess sometimes the old ways aren't just stubbornness, they're proof.
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Plywood and MDF just don't hold paint the same way old-growth pine or fir does either. That rocking chair probably had wood that was dense and tight-grained, so the paint bonded different than what we get at Home Depot today. Primer on modern lumber isn't just tradition, it's trying to make up for the fact that the wood itself is worse.
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