Found out that 80% of antique books use animal-based adhesives that can rot over time

I was reading a conservation blog last night and stumbled on this stat about how many old books are held together with rabbit skin glue or gelatin, and now I'm second-guessing every restoration method I've learned has anyone else run into this problem with their own repairs

3 comments

3 Comments

burns.jenny20d ago

Rabbit skin glue is basically what holds half my bookshelf together.

rubysingh20d agoMost Upvoted

I have about fifteen books from the 1800s in my own collection and I checked a few of them after reading that same blog post. Turns out the hide glue in the spines is already getting brittle and starting to crack where the pages meet the covers. I tried a simple fix on one damaged spine using a ph neutral wheat paste instead of any animal glue and it held up way better than I expected. The paste dries clear and doesn't smell like dead animal parts either. Now I'm thinking about switching all my future repairs over to synthetic or plant based adhesives just to avoid that slow rot problem down the road.

pat_fisher2420d ago

@burns.jenny same here, most of my old books have that rabbit glue smell. But yeah, the wheat paste trick works. I switched to methylcellulose for spine repairs a few years back. Dries flexible, won't rot. Saved me from redoing half my collection.