Tried those fancy kozo papers after swearing by buffered tissue for years. Not going back.

I was always team buffered tissue for endpapers and repairs. Just figured it was the safe standard. Then a conservator friend of mine at the local library showed me how she uses kozo for hinge repairs on old textbooks. It's way stronger than I thought and the way it takes paste is totally different. I did a test run on a beat up 1920s novel last weekend and the flex is just better. No crinkling. Has anyone else made the switch and had it mess up their usual glue mix?

3 comments

3 Comments

morganmartinez6d ago

Paper's paper, man. You're really overthinking this.

daniel_cooper345d ago

Oh come on @morganmartinez, you can't just drop "paper's paper" like it's that simple lmao. Tell that to the guy who spent $40 on a single sheet of handmade cotton fiber stuff from Japan and acts like it's holy water. Paper is like coffee, there's a whole deep end and some people are stubbornly staying in the kiddie pool. But hey, if you're happy with your printer paper and a Bic pen, more power to you. I'll be over here with my notebook that costs more than your lunch and still writes exactly the same lol.

murray.robert5d ago

Honestly, I'm gonna push back hard on this. I've been doing book repairs for about fifteen years now and I've seen kozo fail on older bindings more times than I can count. The stuff is just too aggressive for anything pre-1930 with brittle paper. I had a 1910 encyclopedia set completely delaminate on me because I used a kozo hinge instead of buffered tissue. The kozo pulled the original paper apart when it dried because it's so much stronger than the surrounding material. Buffered tissue might not flex as nice but at least it's sacrificial and won't rip your original text block apart.