Polyurethane glue beats PVA for leather wraps, finally convinced

I always stuck with PVA for book cloth and leather wraps because that's what my mentor used in Portland. But last month I had a batch of thin goatskin that kept curling at the spine, so I grabbed a bottle of Gorilla Glue from the hardware store. One coat on the board, one on the leather, clamped for 40 minutes, and it held flat with zero creep. Has anyone else had better luck with polyurethane on flexible cover materials, or am I the last one to come around?

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paulw6316d ago

This fits a pattern I keep seeing everywhere, where the old standby stops working because the materials changed, not because the method was ever wrong. PVA was built for paper and cloth, but thin goatskin is a whole different animal with how much it moves and pulls. I have noticed the same thing with wood glue versus poly on oily hardwoods. The gap filling and moisture cure just handles stuff that regular glue gives up on. Maybe the real lesson is that a mentor's method is only as good as the supplies they had at the time. Do you find the poly foams up at all on thin leather, or does clamping keep that in check?

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