One of the best pastes used in bookbinding is rice flour paste, not
only is it the strongest of all the pastes but it also dries
transparent.
The only problem with all hand-made pastes, be it
wheat flour, starch or rice flour, is that it sours and moulds very
quickly. A good way of preserving the life of the paste for upto 2-4
weeks is to drop a few whole cloves in the mixture before boiling,
anything with a strong odour (turpentine for example) is not only a
good preservant but also keeps the bugs at bay. I also find that
salycilic acid (crushed asprin) is also an excellent preservant and is
a formulae I use often.
If the paste needs to be a little more
tenacious then mix with the flour a sixth or eighth part of its weight
of powdered alum, adding gum arabic or any kind of size.
The
best way of preventing bookworm can only be controlled by the binder by
adding the correct formulae to the paste used for covering the books.
There is a small insect, Aglossa pinguinalis
that deposits it's larvae in books in the autumn, especially in the
leaves nearest the cover. These gradually produce a kind of mites that
do the binding great damage.
But the most destuctive are the little wood-boring beetles, anobium pertinax and striatum. There is an instance recorded in the 19th century where, in a public library but little frequented, twenty seven
folio volumes were perforated in a straight line by the same insect, in
such a manner that, on passing a cord through the perfectly round hole
made by it, these twenty seven volumes could be raised at once.
As
already mentioned the seat of the mischief appears to lie in the
binding, and the best preventative against their attacks is mineral
salts, to which all insects have an aversion.
Alum and vitriol
are proper for this purpose and is advisable to mix a portion with the
paste used for covering the books i.e. preventative medicine is the
best cure.
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