#starch paste

Random pics of bookbinding that I was able to find on my computer.

Also, most western sources of bookbinding or conservation use wheat starch paste but as a Finnish person, I haven't found and I don't think you can find wheat starch easily in here, since we take celiacs pretty seriously here (lmao it's the excuse, we just love the potato)

So we have maize starch, potato starch, and oat starch available in general. Rice starch is the best one tho since it's available from any asian grocery store. I haven't done any tests on the Finn available starches but grain based starches seem to be the best from what I've read, so potato starch can go and fuck off.

And while I haven't seen any comparisons between wheat and rice starch, I think using either one is fine. The only scientific comparisons I've seen are between oats, potato, etc. but wheat is just the most common in west, while rice starch is most common in east so I think they're both just good. It's just that rice starch is more available in some western countries.

Also, I have used a mix of starch glue and PVA on so while I could write an essay or two about what glues to use, with half it it being questions about WHAT, HOW?? this is always somewhat regional and throwing around brand names is useless. This is something that books about book binding won't usually tell you, but they're just not fucking localized and it matters A LOT.

PVA is a huge category of glues and they do work, since as synthetic glues they can be... elastic? Like, they don't dry stiff. But also, they don't all perform the same. Like in Finland we tend to say to beginners that EriKeeper works, and in US I know that Elmer's Glue is not the same, but it's also the one that works for this purpose and is the basic glue that you can use.

Both Elmer's and EriKeeper are just as bad on the long run but they also both work really well for beginner projects and for someone, who just wants to bind a couple of books for family use, they're both ADEQUATELY GOOD.

So while making up my paste samples, I got some sneaking suspicions about some of them and asked the internet as soon as all the samples were done and cooling.