Shoutout to the person who mentioned using a hair dryer to remove old dust jackets

I tried it on a 1920s poetry book I got at an estate sale in Cleveland and the heat loosened the glue so cleanly I didn't even tear the paper, has anyone else found weird household tools that work great for book mods?

2 comments

2 Comments

stellam8926d ago

Has anyone else tried using a regular spoon to smooth out crinkly pages? I found if you run the back of a spoon over a page that got damp, it flattens it out without making it worse. Also, a plain old eraser works wonders for cleaning pencil marks off vintage covers, way better than any fancy chemical cleaner. For really stubborn tape residue on old dust jackets, a tiny bit of peanut oil on a cotton ball takes it right off, just blot it and let it dry. And don't sleep on using a butter knife to gently pry apart stuck together pages, it's less damaging than your fingers. Just go slow with all of it, you don't want to rush and wreck the book.

betty14426d ago

The spoon trick is genius, I've been doing that for years with my granddad's old paperbacks that got water damage in a flood. You gotta make sure the spoon is completely dry and room temperature though, I learned that the hard way when I used a cold one and it made the paper curl up weird. And yes on the eraser, I use those white plastic ones from the art supply store, they don't leave that crumbly mess behind like the pink rubber ones do. For the peanut oil trick, I'd add that you should test it on a tiny hidden spot first because some of those old dust jackets from the 1940s have a coating that can react to oil. That butter knife method is a lifesaver too, I use a dull one from the kitchen drawer and slide it in at the very edge where the pages are already starting to separate a little.