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Book press failure wrecked my repair job last night
I was regluing a 1920s novel for a client in Portland last night and my trusty book press just snapped. The threaded rod gave out about halfway through tightening, and the whole thing tilted sideways. I lost the alignment on the spine and had to start the glue up from scratch. Used some heavy text blocks and clamps as a temporary fix but it's not the same. Anyone else had a press fail on them mid-project?
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ivan821mo ago
Man I feel your pain. Had the exact same thing happen with a press I built myself from an old book binding kit. The wooden jaw just split clean in half when I was putting pressure on a Shakespeare folio for a university library. Got glue all over my bench and had to peel the whole thing apart with a palette knife while the spine was still tacky. What a nightmare. Ended up using a stack of encyclopedias and a couple of ratchet straps for the rest of that job. Not my finest work but it got the job done.
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angelaellis1mo ago
Wait, you really think a store-bought press failure means the whole design is flawed? I mean, yeah it sucks when things break but @ivan82 had the same issue with a homemade one and still got the job done with encyclopedias and straps. That tells me the real problem is relying too much on one tool instead of having a backup plan. If your press can't handle the pressure of a 1920s novel, maybe it was time for an upgrade anyway. Sometimes these failures push us to get better stuff instead of limping along with junk that's gonna crap out on us.
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