Found out book cloth is just cotton with a fancy name, blew my mind

I was rebacking a 1904 encyclopedia set and the buckram I ordered showed up with a weave I swore was canvas. Looked at the label, it said cotton cloth, so I dug into the supplier's spec sheet and turns out most book cloth, even the archival stuff, is just cotton treated with starch or acrylic. I paid $86 for a roll that's basically heavy duty bedsheet material with extra steps. The starch coating is what gives it that crisp fold, not some magic binder secret. Has anyone else stumbled on a trade 'secret' that turned out to be way simpler than you thought?

2 comments

2 Comments

eva_lewis13d ago

Wait, "heavy duty bedsheet material with extra steps" is genuinely making me laugh but also I'm lowkey horrified. I mean, I knew book cloth wasn't like, magic or anything, but I figured there was at least some kind of special weave or treatment that made it worth the money. The fact that it's just starch or acrylic on cotton feels almost too simple. Like, I've been paying for the idea of something fancy when it's literally the same stuff as a good quality shirt but with a stiffener. I guess that explains why my cheap attempts at making my own book cloth with fabric and wallpaper paste worked so well. Honestly though, that $86 roll thing would've sent me over the edge too.

eric54011d ago

You ever watch someone spend like 4 hours ironing starch onto old bedsheets and call it "artisanal bookbinding material"? @eva_lewis, my buddy did that once, swore it was revolutionary, then his cat sat on the stack and the sheets fused into a cardboard brick. Yeah, that $86 roll is just paying for someone else to do the boring parts.