damaged unreadable secondhand books

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damaged unreadable secondhand books
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mungy

Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2
Location: Wirral

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 6:23 pm Post subject: damaged unreadable secondhand books

when i'm not online i sell secondhand books at people. i buy a lot of books from people too. i often end up with bags of damaged, ureadable and often unsaleable books. i have tried taking them to a nearby paper recycling plant, but they are not interested. i end up taking them to the tip, which is not something i like to do.

is there anybody in the uk on the wirral or surrounding area who can make use of them as paper logs, for composting or anything else you might find a use for unwanted books?

i will happily deliver them for free.

woops, i just saw the recycling forum

could some kind soul move this thread for me

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45434
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 6:30 pm Post subject: Re: damaged unreadable secondhand books

mungy wrote:

woops, i just saw the recycling forum

could some kind soul move this thread for me

Welcome on board Mungy, will move it in a mo.

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 6:30 pm Post subject:
done my friend!!

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28120
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 6:31 pm Post subject:
Welcome to the site No idea on the books though

Bugs

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10744

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 6:31 pm Post subject:
You could offer them free to customers with instructions and/or directions on how to grow mushrooms on them. One or maybe many of the places that sell spawn suggest growing them on books - suspect it is oyster mushrooms.

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 6:32 pm Post subject:
first time I ever used my paper log maker I used an awful paperback that no-one wanted to read. Should work no problem

Cathryn

Joined: 16 Jul 2005
Posts: 19856
Location: Ceredigion

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 8:11 pm Post subject:

Bugs wrote:

You could offer them free to customers with instructions and/or directions on how to grow mushrooms on them. One or maybe many of the places that sell spawn suggest growing them on books - suspect it is oyster mushrooms.

I must try that for the families bookshop - it would make a fun window display - could you point me in the direction of soemoen selling spawn?

Sorry Mungy - a thread hijack - I do like the wording - sell secondhand books "at" people. I am always doing that with books I think everyone should read!

hedgewitch

Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Posts: 5834
Location: Daft wench GHQ

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 8:19 pm Post subject:

There's a kind of psychological barrier with books that people have to get over to be able to see them as objects -- no matter how useless they are in their current form.

I used to work in a large library, and we would sell and re-home as may books as possible after our annual "weed". We would discard the stuff that was useless - which had to qualify as either so damamged it was in incomprehensible, or so out of date it was misinformation (and this only applied when we already had a copy for reference of the outdated info for historical records).

They did go for recycling, but it was quite a few years ago (ahem!)

Even so, library staff would "rescue" volumes and slip them back inside if they saw they were destined for the skip....

In the end, we coded the section of the basement holdin the "doomed" tomes as "hop" -- an alternative to "skip" that fooled most of 'em

mrutty

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1578

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 8:58 pm Post subject:
If only there was a site that showed you how to make paperlog

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42207
Location: North Devon

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 9:00 pm Post subject:
Is there such a thing?

oddballdave

Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 259
Location: Telford, Shropshire

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 06 11:04 pm Post subject:

mrutty wrote:

If only there was a site that showed you how to make paperlog

Fill barrel with water.
Shred newspaper.
Soak Newspaper for 24 hours.
Beat with sharp stick.
Leave to soak a bit longer.
Scoop mush into solid former.
Squeeze to extract as much water as possible
and ensure fim shape.
Tip out of former and leave to dry (week? two?)

Burn.

We used to use bottomless cardboard boxes with no lids as formers. About the size of a house brick.
Place on a grid and leave four or five bricks stacked on top to squeeze the water out.

Minimum effort for maximum returns.

Also used a cement mixer for the pulping when we were in a hurry.

Course YMMV

Dave

Bugs

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10744

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 06 6:46 am Post subject:

ruby wrote:

Bugs wrote:

I must try that for the families bookshop - it would make a fun window display - could you point me in the direction of soemoen selling spawn?

https://www.greendragonwoods.org.uk/mushrooms.shtml for example but I'm sure I saw them somewhere else too, not that it matters, by the look of it.

Interesting articles here:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/publications/pubs/garden1104/fungi.asp

And here:

https://www.permaculture.co.uk/mag/Articles/Mushrooms1.html

While searching I also came across this interesting site:

https://www.myco-farm.com/

Also I *think* there have been other suggestions of places to get kits/spawn from here so a quick search might yield some that people can recommend - mycologue is the obvious starting point but their site seems to be hibernating at the moment.

Lozzie

Joined: 25 May 2005
Posts: 2595

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 06 10:56 am Post subject:
Depending upon the extent of the damage (and whether they are paperback or hard back) you could always try encouraging people to get crafty ... https://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=5963.0

Helen_A

Joined: 26 Jan 2005
Posts: 1548
Location: MK, Bucks.

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 06 10:04 pm Post subject:

There is also this sort of thing

https://www.exlibrisanonymous.com/

That is a US based firm but I did a whole load last summer with the gash covers from misprints of 'local interest' books that the local Oxfam shop couldn't sell and which would otherwise have been skipped, and they went quite well to the tourists

My preferance is for a slightly more formal binding than ring though, so ymmv.

Helen_A

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45525
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 06 10:10 pm Post subject:
compost works . local as well .

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