Shoutout to the retired conservator in Tulsa who got me off PVA for good
I bumped into her at a small supply swap in Tulsa back in March, and she asked what I was using to glue up a torn hinge on a 1911 dictionary. I told her PVA, and she just nodded and pulled out a 60 year old book from her bag where the spine was still soft and opened flat. She explained that PVA dries hard and stiff, and over 10 or 20 years it will pull at the paper fibers every time the book opens, and that's where the cracks start. I had been using it for 6 years on maybe 40 repairs and always figured the stuff was fine because it held. But she was right that a couple of my older repairs are already stiff at the joint. She mixed up a small batch of wheat starch paste right there on her folding table and we did the hinge together, and it dried clear and flexible. I ordered 2 pounds of starch when I got home and the difference on endpapers is night and day. Has anyone else here had a repair come back to them years later because the PVA went hard?