Posting so I hope this can find other distraught bookish people.
So, I had brought my books with me to my office yesterday. One I was nearly finished with and the other I wanted to start on my break. Unfortunately, the heat throughout the office hasn’t been working properly and we’ve been using space heaters. I had no idea that the small space heater I used would have damaged my books. After a few hours I noticed the pages began to bow. They were going at such a slope the covers began to press up. I immediately turned my space heater off and ran to Reddit to see if I could find a solution to fix this. I learned pages have water on them… (What???) I saw comments mentioning putting pressure on them. I grabbed all the packages of printer paper I could fit in my cube and pressed the books down, this did NOT work.
This is where I started using my plant “skills” and decided if the books were dehydrated, like dry hydrophobic moss, I could try to slowly introduce moisture back into the pages. I knew this could be risky… So I came home and turned on my humidifier with a humidistat on low. I placed the book in the same bedroom on a hard flat surface. Over the span of about 4 hours I ran the humidifier. About every 30-45 minutes I would check on the book. Once the pages began laying flat again I took the book out of my humid plant room and placed under a stack of about 15 thick books, for even pressure distribution. I left it alone for about 2 hours, trying to make sure any remaining moisture in the pages were dry. The book remained flat! I had fixed the smaller (400ish pages) of the two. I’ve decided once I finish my thicker book (600+ pages) I’ll try this method again to see if it works for chunky books.
TLDR: Space heater caused books to bow up. Came home, turned a humidifier down low and placed the book on a flat surface. After 4 hours removed book from humid room and placed it under a STACK of books to keep even pressure down. Bowed pages fixed.
by 0bj3ctive