Materials I keep
This is a description of what is on the shelf, not a shopping list. I am not going to name suppliers, and I do not sell anything from this page.
Adhesive
- Wheat flour paste, cooked to a thin jelly, made twice a week in roughly two-litre batches. Used the same day.
- Methyl cellulose, cold-prepared, only for surface work where I want a weak, reversible film.
- PVA — one bottle, kept since 2021, used almost never. I use it for a specific case: a board that has to be re-attached and where I want initial tack while the paste joints do the real work.
Tissues and papers
- Japanese tissue, three weights. Thin for hinge repairs at folds, mid for reinforcing a seam, heavy for the rare case where a spine needs a bridging patch.
- Irish linen, 30 gsm and 45 gsm, for spine linings. The 45 gsm is used less often than I once used it.
- Archival board, 2 mm and 3 mm, for barriers and for replacement endpapers' support boards.
- Unbuffered blotter in bulk. Buffering papers are kept only for storage enclosures.
Thread and sewing
- Linen thread, three thicknesses. Most nineteenth-century re-sewing on this bench is done with the middle one.
- Hemp thread, small supply, used only when the original is hemp and I am re-creating a station rather than adding one.
- No nylon, no polyester thread. Not on principle; I found I could not control the tension the way I can with linen.
Things I stopped using
| Pressure-sensitive tape | Never, in any form. Entry job 96 is the reason it stays on this list. |
|---|---|
| Rubber-based adhesives | Stopped 2022. Two jobs where the adhesive migrated into the board. |
| Solvent combinations I previously used for stain reduction | Kept in a smaller quantity and used only on offcuts from the same paper first. |
| Pre-coated hinge products | Stopped 2021. The coating was never as even as what I can lay myself. |
Tools, briefly
A bone folder that has been on this bench longer than the website. Two pairs of scissors, one for paper and one that has never touched paper. A nipping press, a standing press, a sewing frame that I rebuilt once because the original cross-bar had worked loose. A warm plate I use far less often than I used to.
If you came here looking for where to buy something, this is the wrong page. If you came to see whether anyone else has stopped using something, this is the right one.