Found a cheap trick for smoothing out rippled page edges

I had this old paperback where the pages were all wavy from humidity, and I tried running a warm iron over a parchment sheet on top of them. It actually flattened about 80% of the ripples in like 2 minutes. Anyone else try this or got a better method?

2 comments

2 Comments

green.jessica5d ago

Huh, "worked for me in like 2 minutes" - did you test it on a page with any text or images, or just a plain area? I'm always nervous about heat and moisture near ink, especially if it's an older book with that classic musty smell. My worry is the iron could melt the ink or make the paper feel weirdly brittle after, so I'd really like to know if yours looked okay up close after it cooled down.

hall.quinn2d ago

Ha, careful not to iron your book into a flat sheet!