# care and feeding of the book...how do you straighten wrinkled bible pages?



## George Bailey

I have a NKJV New Geneva Bible that my son was using for awhile, and when I picked it up again to read, found several pages, or groups of pages that are quite wrinkled. I've tried just straightening them, and then making sure the book was folded flat; I didn't try "extreme" weight on it, but just straightening them and having the book closed doesn't seem to help. 

Any ideas on straightening out crinkled pages?


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## LawrenceU

When my daughter was very young she once spilled a glass of water on my open Cambridge Wide Margin Cameo KJV. I let daubed up as much of the water as possible and then let it dry. When dry I took it to the ironing board. I've done this many times in the past. Here is how:

Take a tea towel and stretch it over a thin paste board or poster board that is larger than your page. Tape it to the back board outside of the margins of the page. Get the front flat.
Heat the iron to a steam setting, I use the same temp that I would for cotton.
Start at the last wrinkled page in the book. Slip in the board behind the wrinkled page and gently iron it flat.
Repeat to the front of the wrinkled pages.

Depending upon how wrinkled the pages are you may be able to get them back to pristine condition. This will not fix the gutter, but it is a good remedy. My bible mentioned above now opens very easily in Ephesians 2 and 3 due to the slight wrinkling in the gutter.


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## Andres

so what I'm getting is, don't let kids around your good bibles?


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## bouletheou

A clean, low temp steam iron directly applied to each page will do it as well.


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## George Bailey

---------- Post added at 08:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:50 PM ----------

[/COLOR]


Andres said:


> so what I'm getting is, don't let kids around your good bibles?


 
believe me, I took care of that issue!


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## Michael

Very interesting. I have the same issue with one of my bibles that has a consistent wrinkle on the first 8 or 10 pages of Genesis. I mentioned these fixes to my wife and she seemed to already know that they would work. However she said that in time it would in time also affect the aging of the paper (particularly the color). Can anyone verify how noticeable this will be in the future?


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## bouletheou

No idea how long you can get away with it. I can't imagine it would render it unreadable. It probably would yellow it over time.

Why is it wrinkling so consistently?


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## Michael

It actually came that way. Almost like the bible got closed funny on that group of pages at some point.


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## bouletheou

try spraying an extra-fine mist of water on a page, letting it sit, then hitting it with the iron

---------- Post added at 05:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:50 PM ----------

If that doesn't work, I know a guy who is a huge books and bindings guy. I'll ask him.


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