Adhesive creep

[hatam_soferet]

Adhesive creep on a sefer Torah. The seam reinforcements are glued on; over time, the glue Creeps out from where it was originally put. Being sticky, the creepy glue sticks to a) other things b) dirt. Here, the glue from the reinforcement on the right-hand side of the picture has stained the Torah’s margin, on the left-hand side of the picture.

Preventing adhesive creep is a pastime of archivists; a sofer removes the stains with sandpaper, which tends to make archivists scream incoherently.

This is one of the differences between scribes, whose job is to keep a manuscript in good working order, and archivists, whose job is to preserve manuscripts for posterity. Scribes do practical things that archivists would never dream of doing. But they are both troubled by adhesive creep.

Mirrored from hasoferet.com.