I finally saw the difference between hot glue and PVA on a spine

I've been repairing old library books for about 6 months now and always used hot glue because it was fast. Last week I tried PVA on a 1970s textbook with a broken hinge and the flexibility was night and day. Has anyone else noticed a big difference in how long the repair holds up with one versus the other?

4 comments

4 Comments

gavin3651mo ago

My grandfather bound books for 40 years and he swore by hot glue for everything till the day he retired. I watched him fix a whole set of encyclopedias from the 50s that are still holding up fine today. So I gotta ask, is it really that serious? Like, you're fixing library books that are already beat up anyway. PVA or hot glue, either way they're probably gonna get checked out and thrown in a backpack a few more times and then end up back on the shelf. I just don't see the big deal about flexibility when most people barely open their textbooks past page 50.

angelarivera1mo agoMost Upvoted

@gavin365 sounds like his grandpa was working with some seriously tough old glue, because the stuff in the hot glue gun now is basically just plastic in stick form. PVA is way less grabby but it bends instead of cracking, so that textbook hinge actually moves instead of snapping clean off the first time someone opens it past the table of contents. Hot glue is fine if you're just slapping a cover back on, but for anything that gets opened more than twice, PVA is the only way to go unless you want to re-glue it every six months.

lewis.mila1mo ago

And here I thought we were saving books, not starting a religious war over adhesives. Next thing you know there'll be a hot glue vs PVA championship belt. Grandpa's encyclopedias are probably held together by sheer nostalgia at this point anyway.

sean_green441mo ago

Oh man, @lewis.mila you just made me snort laugh with that championship belt idea, haha! But here's something nobody's touching on at all: what about the smell factor? I've got old encyclopedias from the 60s and the PVA-glued ones have this weird sour vinegar thing going on after decades, while the hot glue stuff just sits there like plastic. Also, if you ever have to undo a bad repair, hot glue peels off like a sticker whereas PVA soaks in and leaves permanent stains on the paper edges. So maybe the real question is whether you want future librarians cursing your name when they have to fix a fix, not whether the book lasts another 10 years.