Just found out how much glue a 19th century bindery used in a year

Honestly, I was reading this old trade journal from 1895 I found online. It said a medium sized bindery in Boston would go through over 800 gallons of animal glue in a single year. That's like a whole swimming pool of the stuff. Tbh, I can't even imagine the smell or the pots they must have had going all day. It really puts my little 4-ounce jar into perspective. Has anyone else come across a fact about old bookbinding that just blew your mind?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret_bennett31mo ago

Try heating your jar in a water bath first.

sam5301mo ago

Honestly that "whole swimming pool" comparison feels like a stretch. Eight hundred gallons sounds like a lot until you spread it over a whole year of work. That's only a couple gallons a day for a whole shop, which seems pretty reasonable for gluing up hundreds of books. The smell probably just became a normal background thing, like a bakery. My grandpa's workshop always had a specific smell too, you just get used to it.

anthony1271mo ago

Sam530 makes a good point about the daily amount, but you're missing the scale. Eight hundred gallons isn't a couple of pots. That's a massive, constant operation. Picture a huge vat, maybe five feet across, being kept hot and stirred for hours every single day. The energy to heat it, the workers hauling it around, the sheer volume of animal parts rendered down. It's an industrial process hiding in what we think of as a craft trade.