Warped or Bowed Albums
- By Jared Lim
- 2 min reading time
We understand it is distressing to see your precious album warped or bowed. We take great care in hand binding each album, using the finest materials available. Your pages consist of Italian made, acid-free boards, printed on papers made in Germany.
Albums warping or bowing are usually caused by three main reasons.
1) It's moved to a new environment that's substantially extreme or different from the previous
2) A change of environment and exposure where the album was stored.
3) Improper storage - storing your albums standing up (vertically) instead of lying down (horizontally).
Warped albums are not manufacturing defect. As each album is made from paper materials, even high end paper materials, which are derived from wood pulp (including alpha cellulose) are affected by a change of environment (humidity or dryness). Paper materials will react by either expanding or contracting, and this causes any paper material to warp or bend.
Below is a studio album which is in our showroom (non air conditioned most of the time) which started bowing after over a year.
About 3 weeks later, the same album went back into its original state, shown below.
The above remedy? Nothing actually. We left the album inside the original storage box, untouched, and the album remedied by itself. There were also other albums that required over 3 months of pressing before it flatten back to its original state.
How to remedy
There are many factors which sometimes makes remedying this issue differ considerably from one album to the next.
If there's no urgency in rectifying the issue, you can start by actually doing very basic things. Make sure it's stored flat, horizontally, and if it's stored in an environment that's extremely humid, hot, or even in an extremely cold and dry location, try moving it to an environment which is 'normal' - bedroom, living room, study. The warped issue may resolve by itself.
Another more effective option, is to place something heavy on top of the album for a prolong period of time. Heavy books seem to work well, and usually readily available. Alternatively, you can also create a makeshift press by placing a solid MDF wooden board on top of the album, then placing something heavy such as a barbell, kettlebell or something similar. Leave it for several days to a week, and if that doesn't resolve, continue leaving it till the album is flat.
