My son just spilled water all over my book. I used a blow dryer turning the pages one by one. Then I used a flatiron, for straightening hair, to smooth out the pages in bunches, then one by one. Now the book with warm, ironed pages is under my mattress between two thin hardcover books. It looks great and it took about 45 minutes.
This was such a weirdly heart warming video. I loved the care you chose to offer to a wet and frazzled book instead of just writing it off. My favourite bit was the wrapped up bricks. Gold!
If your book has shiny paper pages, it's likely coated with clays which cohere strongly upon drying. Voila -- glued together until rewetted. Uncoated paper is usually only affected by swelling/wrinkling. But if the back of the text block, underneath the spine, absorbed much water, you can help it and the spine too by poking a paper towel in there when the book is (carefully) open.
You DON'T need to BUY one. Put the book on the floor. Get a piece of 1-inch-thick board (bigger than the book.). Put it on the book. Put something heavy on it like a BED, or CABINET, or whatever. Just balance the heavy object so it would not topple over.
Once you have 2 boards to sandwich the book, some other options are bottles of water, large cans of food, covered bricks as shown, workout weights, other books, appropriately sized DIY sand bags, bags of rice or pieces firewood. DIY "book clamp" can be made using 2 boards to sandwich the book and c-clamps, bar-clamps or small hydraulic jacks. For small jobs, c-clamps are easy. Just place the book, between protective papers and plywood boards or planks. Using 1, 2, or 3+ c-clamps per side, evenly apply pressure to all 4 sides of the sandwich. Leave in the clamps, as you would for a conventional book press. Hope this helps someone.
Thank you for showing such a great way to repair a wet book. After seeing this video I repaired my antique book. I had to do it twice but amazingly it came out great. I'll browse your other videos to see if you have one in removing mold or foxing. Thanks
I dont know if this has happened to anybody else, but i was reading a book, and left it in my bed, so i could go do something else, and at the time, it was rainy season so the moisture in the air of my house was pretty high and we didnt have anything to get rid of it. So 10 minutes later, when i come back, my books pages are all wobbly and distorted, as if it was wet, but it was just due to the moisture in the air. The book was brand new so you can imagine how confused and mad i was.
thank you so much, this is great, well presented and lovely with the music!!! my librarian was very uptight and not smiling so all the smiles in this are wonderful : )
Thank you for this video. I like to buy used books, and while I am unsure if they are water damaged (no wavy pages), they are definitely bent out of shape lol. I guess I didnt think about pressing a book to the extent of a book presser. Seeing the water damaged book being flattened out made me realize I never put enough weights on my books when I pressed them. Now I have a book with random other things on top of it pressing it down as much as the book presser did to that book (or at least close enough!). Thank you!!
Thanks a lot for your help ! My piano teacher lent me a music training book. A water bottle spilled where it was sitting. It had a cap but I didn't know it wasn't waterproof. The bottle "dripped" onto some papers that were on the book, but by capillary action the water reached the book. All the pages were damp, not enough to put the blotters on, but thanks to you I thought about putting a fan. It is dry, all that remains is to put it under the press to put the pages back into shape. I will be able to return a book in good condition to my teacher who is so kind.
Thank you for this video! Everywhere I searched I only found the steps up until leave over night to dry, but what I really wanted to know was what to do after all of that.
My mother got my favourite book War And Peace wet by accident and I was so upset but she dried the pages, it’s still readable but the presentation looked a bit messy.
Thanks. I used a hairdryer with a concentrator attachment to smooth out each page and it went well and and dried each page quickly. The freezer idea could be really good for situations when you really don't have the time.
Thank you so much. As I assumed this is what I did. Unfortunately I do not have a book press. I am concerned about the dry mold and please could you tell me how to get rid of it. Thank you.
Pat Pathinayake my marksheet has been stuck in between due to moisture...it a folded type class x original marksheet please help me how remove the stucked moisture because of this cannot unfold it otherwise it will torn
I tried this with a small instruction book that had glossy paper pages. It has been under a stack of heavy books for 2 weeks but they are still rippled. Any suggestions?
HELP! WET BOOK EMERGENCY! Our house flooded. I had a leather-bound, pocket New Testament that was printed in 1824 that was so saturated that by the time I found it, I squeezed it and a small puddle came out. I had previously seen your video, so while it was still wet, I put some paper towels between the pages and put it in the freezer. Now that the emergency is over, I have time to bring it back out of the freezer and rescue it.... But what do I do after I get it back out of the freezer!!?? I have found lots of sources that say to put it in the freezer until you can deal with it later, but none of them say what to do when you get it back out! Help!!
For a textbook with lightly waxed pages, this i what I did: 1.) Squeezed out excess water. 2.) One paper towel between each page. 3.) Placed a large plastic sheet like a ziplock bag underneath and under the bottom and on top of the book. 4.) Laid book on water safe a flat surface like a table top. 5.) Placed several other heavy books on top. 6.) Let book sit overnight and repeated Steps #1-5 for an additional day. 7.) Removed paper towels and replaced with blank pieces of white printer paper. Repeated steps 3-5 until pages were dry. 8.) Removed printer paper and on a medium-low setting ironed out each page with a clothing iron.
These steps can smooth out warped pages but do not make pages supple again. Does anyone know how to reduce the stiffness from the water damage and restore flexibility to the paper?
Mine is already like the "Yikes" book. There were other priorities when we had a flood here. I did not get to check out my picture art book until it was dry. The pages are warped and some stuck together. Is it possible to save it? I'm sure most pages can be wet and separated but there's a lot of rippling.
I walked home during the rain with a 700 page book and my bag zipper was left open and the first 50 pages got wet and i tried to put a bunch of other books ontop for pressure but i dont think it was heavy enough and its still crinkly :(
im in the process of saving my book worth thousands of dollars thanks to my parents leaving it on the basement floor during a flood thank you. I mean the saving part is thanks to you so thanks.
Advice PLEASE. I accidentally split my large, well used paperback Harry Potter book in half. Now it's in two pieces. To repair it, would it be best just to use clear tape or is there a better way? Thanks for any advice ou can give. 😮❤
@lisette2060 thanks but this particular one is sentimental to us. Ha, we still haven't fixed it, my son grabbed it to reread and now it's on the shelf.
you shouldn't have shown a different book while you were exwplaining about the math one. You didn't explain how to unstick the pages that where glued togather because of the water, you just put towels between groups of pages and put a fan on it. The pages will still be stuck and then you show another book that has nothing to do with this one.
what if your book looks like this 2:20.....mine looks not exactly like this but yeah it's damaged .....what should i do now, i didn't knew how to repair it and now i am doomed.................plz help
I think my mom spilled water on my sketchbooks. I noticed one of the sketchbooks (the one I usually use) with wrinkled papers and the hardcover is wrinkled badly that the design’s coming off already. It was a cheap one so I said nevermind. I can still use it after all… But now that I picked up the mix media sketchbook…. This one have a bigger water damage. What should I do?? This is probably a few months old water damage…
Oh no. I borrowed a friends book and now she’s mad at me (for another reason) and wants it back. How will I tell her that I spilled a glass on it? The whole top half is fine, and three quarters of the pages are fine, but the bottom half of the last quarter is all wrinkly. What do I do?
I have a slip cover for a large comic book, it has wrinkles on it, came from factory that way and was sealed. I tried to iron/lot of weight on it, does not seem to straighten it, its paper with like a like very light laminate (only way I can describe it) printed colour cover, perhaps thats reason why it will not de wrinkle. Anything possible to try? thanks
My 2 year old just knocked over her water bottle all over my BRAND NEW BOOK (I got it yesterday!) I tried blow drying it but the pages got wrinkled, kind of hard/crunchy, and look like it may have shrunk! I’m going to do my best to flatten the pages and press it for a few days or else try my hand at ironing them like some of the comments say, I hope that helps!
aaaaaa my salt lamp sweated salt liquid all over my desk and the bottom tips of 19 pages got wet and salted- i didnt notice til today, a whole week since. the pages had already dried with salt lumps in them and waves and visible salt along the edges which kept the pages not-flat. i got my finger tips wet and went along the edge of the book removing the salt just at the edges (couldnt remove the bumps of salt that got inside the tip of the back cover page though), then i let that dry and have had it under a heavy stack of books for 7 hours. The book is dry again now but while the book is more compact now, the waves have become more like creased waves but still better than it was. Does the salt do bad things to the book? I''m just a high schooler.
Can these preservation techniques be used for paper Magazines? I've got this one magazine that I really like, But idiotically placed it in a back pack with a water bottle. I dried it with a hair blower. But now it's wrinkled on one side and the images have a stain mark. HOW DO I FIX THIS!?
The other day my journal got wet so I put it in the sunlight but forgot to press it by putting some weight on it. Now its all wobbly/wrinkled and looks untidy :( can anyone lmk what I should do ? The notebook is completely dry now.
A few days ago i spilled some water unfortunately the bottom part on two of my library books got damaged luckily i saw this video it helped me both look good barley tell there's damage plus i have a great fan thanks
to do that you have to carefully remoisten the book page by page and press the pages flat one at a time using an iron. There are other videos around on YT of folks restoring damaged and warped books this way.
Sure, but what about after the fact, when drying(100% of pages stuck together) has taken place? Or should one re-wet the book and follow this example, and if so, does it have to be the same puddle?😆😅🤣😂
Thank you for the video my husband didn’t think you do anything with his book and I think this is going to help and I like that you are going to dry it and then press it we’re gonna try do both at the same time but I guess the air needs to get into the pages to dry them out properly first
Believe it or not, just use cloth iron or use microwave oven. Use over with intervals of 30 second. Try with a rough paper. Make sure the binding of book has no metal.
I think my Manga books are beyond saving at this point, since I didn't notice the water damage until a few days after they got soaked. I tried putting heavy books on it for a day and a half, and they're still wrinkled.
@@futureceo8943 Cause I don't wanna ruin my manga books any more than they actually are. Plus, if that method fails, I will have made my books even worse than before.
