| ♥ 0 | The book I’m working on was printed in the last 1800s- early 1900s (title page with the date is o the bottom of the stack right now. Sorry). The pages are extremely brittle (I’m assuming from high acidity). I’ve patched and patched and patched some more with Japanese repair tissue on the pages that have already been ripped, but I can’t do that for every page. Would humidifying the text block help? I can’t get any de-acidification spray with all of the businesses shutting down. Marked as spam |
| Private answer Hi Sarah, I am afraid that brittle pages cannot be made less brittle. Even the de-acidification sprays will only halt the deterioration rather than ameliorate it. I have found that when I have a very brittle book that I can't even repair the pages because the repairs only cause new breaks. Occassionally I will repair using the lightest tissue possible and barely touching it. Less is more in these cases. Ultimately the book will be lost and if it is very valuable it should be disbound and scanned and then saved (de-acidified if possible) but it will not be able to be re-bound. All this is said without seeing any photos. Did you know that you can post them here? I wish I had better news. Marked as spam  Posted by Sophia S.W. Bogle (Questions: 1, Answers: 237)Answered on March 23, 2020 6:36 pm | |
| Private answer It was the book in the video you found on my YouTube channel. How sad! I had noticed that just touching it seemed to be causing more damage. I set it aside and was hoping there would be some magic trick I didn't know. Looks like this poor baby will be living in a phase box in technical services for the rest of its days. :( Marked as spam  Posted by Sarah Terauchi (Questions: 17, Answers: 11)Answered on March 23, 2020 11:10 pm |
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