Took me 5 hours to track down a glue issue that should have taken 20 minutes

I was working on a rebinding job for an old 1950s textbook, and the spine just wouldn't hold after I applied the adhesive. I figured I must have used the wrong kind of glue, so I spent hours scraping everything off, checking my supplies, and even driving across town to a specialty shop. Turned out the problem was the room temperature - my workspace dropped below 60 degrees overnight and the PVA I normally use wouldn't cure right. Five hours wasted because I didn't think to check the thermostat first. Has anyone else run into temperature messing with their bindings like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

emeryfox21d ago

Sixty degrees is actually right on the edge for a lot of PVA formulations to kick off. I've seen some brands straight up print 65-70F as the minimum on the bottle, might be worth checking your specific batch's specs.

the_ruby21d agoMost Upvoted

Was the cat at least apologetic, or did it just look at you like you were the one who messed up?

nathan54521d ago

Man, I feel your pain. I once spent a whole morning trying to fix a binding that wouldn't hold... only to realize my cat had bumped the thermostat down to 55 while I was asleep. Five hours, and I could have just yelled at the cat instead.