Book cloth or duct tape? My emergency rebind went sideways

My cat destroyed the cover of a 1920s poetry collection I was restoring, and I had to choose between proper book cloth from the shop or whatever was in my junk drawer. I grabbed the duct tape because it was raining and I didn't want to walk 20 minutes to the supply store. The tape worked okay for about a day, then it peeled off and took a chunk of the original spine with it. Now I'm trying to fix the damage with wheat paste and a scrap of linen, but I think I might just have to accept the scar. Anyone else ever made a panic repair that made things worse?

1 comments

1 Comment

evanfox11d ago

Did the tape leave sticky residue on the paper? That stuff can soak into old bindings and make wheat paste sit weird. I learned that the hard way when I taped a map back together and it turned the whole margin yellow and brittle. If it did, try laying a sheet of wax paper over the spot and hitting it with a warm iron for a few seconds, but test on a scrap corner first.