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Overheard a guy at a bookbinding meetup say glue pH matters
Was at a meetup in Portland last month and this older guy was talking about how he tested the pH of his PVA and it was acidic enough to yellow pages over 5 years. I never even thought to check that. I've been using the same cheap glue from Amazon for 2 years now. Anyone here actually test their glue's pH or just trust what the label says?
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tara_palmer1mo ago
...and then what, the pages turn a little yellow over a decade? I mean sure, if you're archiving stuff for a museum or whatever but for most hobby bindings it seems like overkill. @sammurray says people sleep on small details, but sometimes those details are just not that big of a deal for how most of us actually use the books. I've got paperbacks from the 80s that are yellow as hell and I still read em fine. If the glue holds and doesn't crack, that's probably good enough for 99% of what we're doing here.
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