Changed my mind about using PVA glue for everything after a repair job in Boston

I always used standard PVA for repairs, but a client brought in a 1902 family bible from a damp Boston basement with mold damage. The PVA I used on a test patch made the paper brittle and dark. Switched to a wheat starch paste for the actual work, and the pages stayed flexible without staining. Anyone else run into this with really old, acidic paper?

3 comments

3 Comments

hollyl2519d ago

Yikes, that's a real horror story.

diana51219d ago

A friend of mine had a similar thing happen with some old letters from a ship captain. She used a basic white glue on a corner and it went all stiff and yellow almost overnight. It was a real wake-up call. She ended up taking a whole workshop on archival methods because of it. The instructor said the modern glue can actually speed up the breakdown of paper that's already acidic. My friend only uses reversible pastes for anything pre-1920 now.

hill.margaret19d ago

My buddy Mike tried to fix a 1910s map of Providence with regular craft glue. It looked fine for a week, then the whole mended edge turned this weird, crispy brown, like an old french fry. He was so mad because the map was a gift for his dad. A librarian told him the plastic in the glue basically fights with the old paper and makes it worse. He had to learn to make methylcellulose paste from a powder to fix it right. Honestly, seeing that brown line made me nervous to touch anything old with my own glue bottle.