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Switching from PVA to wheat paste on my last 6 books, and I can't tell if I'm fooling myself
I bind mostly journals and small runs of 10 to 20 copies out of my basement in Cleveland, so I'm not doing fine leather work here. For 3 years I used plain PVA for everything, spines, hinges, casing in, and it worked fine, dried fast, no fuss. Last winter I read a bunch of old posts saying wheat paste gives you more open time and a softer spine, so I mixed up a batch and did 6 books with it. The open time is real, I can adjust a hinge 20 minutes later instead of 20 seconds, but I'm not sure the dried result is any better and now I'm dealing with mold worries in a damp basement. Half of me says just go back to PVA and stop being precious about it. The other half says the wheat paste books just feel nicer in the hand. Anyone here actually done a side by side and stuck with one? Which way did you land and why?
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