I live in Ohio and we have very rough Winters.  Lately, I'm having tons of issues with games I buy warping.  I order some books and have them delivered in the mail, but I always make sure I get them inside as soon as they are delivered.  However, despite my efforts, I have had several books begin having warped pages and not wanting to close all the way properly.

Do any of you run into this? How do you deal with it? Have you been able to fix this?

A pic of my newest warped book is below.

Quote from: Batjon on January 20, 2024, 10:28:23 PM
I live in Ohio and we have very rough Winters.  Lately, I'm having tons of issues with games I buy warping.  I order some books and have them delivered in the mail, but I always make sure I get them inside as soon as they are delivered.  However, despite my efforts, I have had several books begin having warped pages and not wanting to close all the way properly.

Do any of you run into this? How do you deal with it? Have you been able to fix this?

A pic of my newest warped book is below.

It doesn't look awful. I think (not an expert) once the paper and cardboard have expanded like that, it's impossible to get completely fixed.

Short of the standard "compress then under a heavy stack of books," suggestion, I think you're SOL.

Quote from: Batjon on January 20, 2024, 10:28:23 PM
I live in Ohio and we have very rough Winters.  Lately, I'm having tons of issues with games I buy warping.  I order some books and have them delivered in the mail, but I always make sure I get them inside as soon as they are delivered.  However, despite my efforts, I have had several books begin having warped pages and not wanting to close all the way properly.

Do any of you run into this? How do you deal with it? Have you been able to fix this?

A pic of my newest warped book is below.

This will work, but I don't know exactly the exact measures to do it.  Get a humidifier for your room to keep the humidity at a better level and leave you door open to maintain the rooms temperature.  After you get better humidity, you could stack other books onto the warped book and possibly it could help to deal with the warping.  If the dryness of the air caused the book to warp then likely an increase in humidity should help to get the book straightened out.  Do not aim the humidifier at the books it will warp the pages and I don't know the proper humidity level for a room with books, that's the sticky part.

I really fucking hate the forum software, you can't delete a post and the reply with how they embed the tags leads to fuck ups like this all the time.

Happens to me too. I got several of the 5e books very warped.

The solution was to put them under some other books and let them press for a week. That got most of the wavyness flattened and after years of being in stacks they are all looking fine.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 20, 2024, 11:26:16 PM
Short of the standard "compress then under a heavy stack of books," suggestion, I think you're SOL.

This solution is highly effective.  I buy many old books that are in subpar condition.  I flatten them with time and the weight of other heavy books.

By the way OP. Thats nothing compared to the accordions mine arrived as. This was a "mild" one.

This happened to me before but it was because of too much moisture in the air.

Pressing a book flat over time, often under a stack of books; is all I've ever tried.  It does help.  More weight and more time, help more.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on January 21, 2024, 12:30:09 AM

Quote from: Batjon on January 20, 2024, 10:28:23 PM
I live in Ohio and we have very rough Winters.  Lately, I'm having tons of issues with games I buy warping.  I order some books and have them delivered in the mail, but I always make sure I get them inside as soon as they are delivered.  However, despite my efforts, I have had several books begin having warped pages and not wanting to close all the way properly.

Do any of you run into this? How do you deal with it? Have you been able to fix this?

A pic of my newest warped book is below.

This will work, but I don't know exactly the exact measures to do it.  Get a humidifier for your room to keep the humidity at a better level and leave you door open to maintain the rooms temperature.  After you get better humidity, you could stack other books onto the warped book and possibly it could help to deal with the warping.  If the dryness of the air caused the book to warp then likely an increase in humidity should help to get the book straightened out.  Do not aim the humidifier at the books it will warp the pages and I don't know the proper humidity level for a room with books, that's the sticky part.

Humidity is definitely the cause, but I don't actually think much can be done about it.

The problem is this looks like it's a humidity problem at the location of the printer, and possibly a manufacturing process problem. I imagine the printer is a non-air conditioned building in South China. Now if you remember your news headlines from last year, China had a major heat wave and drought last summer, which means that the books were bound in a very hot, very dry place. It's possible they also skipped out on some of the water used in the binding adhesives because of the record drought.

Ship it to the US, put it in an air conditioned room with standard humidity, the binding and cardboard absorb some humidity out of the air and change shape, and presto! Warped binding!

The best thing to do is to find a humidor which is large enough you can actually compress the binding. You may be able to get the book to return to normal(ish) shape by storing it under relatively high humidity until the cardboard relaxes. That said, I'm not terribly optimistic. OP's book looks like the binding itself has shrunk. Humidity cycling can probably fix cardboard warping, but the binding will probably not respond to humidity changes after it's dried.

I've had this happen to my books on occasion because I live in the south where high humidity is a way of life. I have a library at home and I fight this by using a room dehumidifier during the summer months. The stacking of heavier books on top does work, but sometimes they just go back to warping once away from the stack unless the moisture is removed from the pages.

Now, I've also seen this before with new books that came from the printers with pages oversaturated with ink, there isn't much hope with those.

This is an issue with the humidity at the press. As the ink gets put on the paper the paper gets wetter and wetter. The makes the paper stretch and hence misalign and not be cut correctly or lay flat. There are solutions to this but they cost. Most low cost printers can't afford the solutions. A good printer will know this about their press and try to reduce the ink, but this can produce washed out colours.

If you are in the biz of creating a full colour book for offset printing this is one of the reason you don't want to use things like 'rich black' or pantone spots. Try to make sure your colours are flattened correctly, and check that your transparencies can be correctly processed. Ink saving techniques not only save money but they reduce the wetness of the paper and hence reduce web creep, and bottle etc.

I've had the "wavy books" thing happen to me before. I agree with jeff37923, it's likely the humidity. Whenever I order books and take them out of the plastic wrap, they almost always go through a weird phase where the pages get wavy, and then after a few days of adjusting they go back to normal. It also helps that whenever you see them starting to do that, throw them on the shelf between some heavy books and it usually goes away on its own.