Rescue Wet Books

Water wrecks books - here's how to dry a really wet book you want to rescue.

If you have a ton of soaked books from a flood call a commercial service.

A dried book will never be like new.

But at least you will be able to read it and use it.

Creative Commons by-nc-sa

Step 1 First Aid

• Wet books are fragile, hold it flat with two hands and do not shake it.
• Blot - do NOT rub - the wet pages with old tee shirts or cloth towels.
• Careful blotting the cover as dye will transfer to your towel.
• Stand the book up on an upside-down plastic mesh basket
• Fan the cover and pages out in a warm, dry area
• The plastic mesh helps air flow and supports the book
• Sunlight and a fan will speed the drying
• Allow a day or two to dry

Comments

[reganbella]

Thank you so much! I was reading in the tub and I dropped my library book(Oops!).

[ChrysN]

Great instructable! A good think to know, since I like to read in the bath tub!

[a.nony.mouse]

so I'm not the only one! And here my mum was making it out like I was.... would have been extremely valuable to me a few months ago... the librarians weren't too happy that I dropped their book in a tub! It survived, but a few of the cover pages sticked.

[ChrysN]

The book I dropped in the tub was borrowed from a friend, I felt pretty bad.

[cdnbambam]

Or just throw it in a freezer for a few days and it will be almost like it never got wet.

[iectyx3c]

Thanks for the reminder, I meant to explain about this. Home freezing a completely soaked book is destructive.

Commercial water removal and restoration companies uses vacuum freeze drying. This causes the water to sublimate directly into a gas.

Just plain old home freezing causes heavy damage to sopping wet books.

Ice crystals expand and burst through pages and binding. Pages become welded together permanently and ink, glue and dies, spread through the book.

When it thaws, you have a pile of mush, perfect for papier machie pinata.

[Cyberscann54]

most freezers have anti frost if you leave an open container in it, it will dry out.

[Marrock]

This would also be a good way to antique a book for display or prop making. Nothing like wrinkly pages to make a book look old.

[Ian M]

I had a bunch of books (magazines really) that were caught in a flood during the ice storm in November. There were I lot of them and they aren't particularly valuable, so I followed a different procedure: -bake them in the oven for 20-30 minutes -remove them, flip through the pages to let the steam out -bake them again, flipped if I remembered -press them between two pieces of plywood, lined with aluminum foil, and held together with C-clamps. obviously, they didn't come out perfect, but they're still serviceable.