Reviews
Part of Budgeting bookbinding supplies by category beats chasing a single price list
Choosing bookbinding supplies by what they do to their neighbors, not the invoice
A bookbinder's guide to judging supplies by lifetime cost: acid migration, plastic off-gassing, a specification checklist, and when to stop over-specifying.
What to take away
- Choose materials by lifetime cost, which includes what they do to the things they touch.
- Salvaged and secondhand stock carries unknowns, and some of those unknowns are hazards rather than inconveniences.
- Plastics in your stock can quietly damage everything stored beside them.
- The cheapest specification that meets the requirement is the correct one, not the most conservative.
Cost is not just the invoice
A material has three costs: what you pay, what it wastes, and what it does to its neighbors. The third is the one that ruins projects. Acidic board discolors the endpapers glued to it. Unstable plastic degrades the sheets stored with it. Neither cost appears on the order.
So the material question is really two questions. Does this meet the requirement, and what will it be doing in five years?
Know what is actually in what you buy
Cheap stock often means salvaged, secondhand or unlabeled stock, and that carries a cost that never appears on an invoice. The Park Service note on hazardous materials in your collection argues for finding out rather than avoiding the question.
Some objects an institution is bound to preserve can harm the people who handle them. The subject can seem overwhelming and easier to ignore, but risk to staff, volunteers and visitors drops substantially once an institution becomes informed about the hazards present.
At a bench the equivalents are ordinary rather than dramatic. Old leather may have been treated, secondhand cloth may carry residues, and salvaged board can be anything at all. New labeled stock costs more per sheet and removes an entire class of unknown, which is a real saving once you count the time spent testing.
Watch the plastics in your own stock
Plastic sleeves, old folders and cheap boxes accumulate in a working space and are rarely reassessed. The Park Service note on monitoring acidic off-gassing of plastics explains what is at stake and how to check.
Deteriorating plastics can emit acidic vapors that contaminate and degrade other materials. Simple monitoring options include acid-detection strips and metal coupons. The response is to increase ventilation and isolate the plastics from everything else.
You do not need test strips to act on the principle. Anything soft, oily, yellowed or sharp-smelling should come out of the cupboard.
A specification checklist
Material / Ask for
- Text paper
- Lignin-free, alpha cellulose, grain stated · Unstated grain
- Board
- Acid-free, one thickness, grain marked · Chipboard, gray board
- Cloth
- Paper-backed, cotton or linen · Unbacked upholstery fabric
- Thread
- Linen, unwaxed · Pre-waxed, unlabeled fiber
- Enclosure stock
- Buffered or neutral, stated pH · Corrugated packing card
Buy the cheapest thing that passes
Over-specifying is its own waste. Rag board where buffered wood pulp would do, archival tissue for a rough dummy, or conservation adhesive for a jig all spend money that produces nothing visible.
Decide the requirement first, then buy down to it rather than up from it. The broader property list is in choosing materials for book arts, and the budget those choices roll into is in a planning method for supply costs.
