Corner folding trick from a library book finally made sense to me

Last week I was repairing this old children's book from the 1960s, the cover was hanging on by a thread and the corners were all beat up. I kept trying to clamp the corners down with binder clips and heavy books, but they'd always puff back out after a day. Then I remembered this technique I saw in a library restoration manual years ago, where you dampen the corner cloth with a tiny bit of water and use a bone folder to crease it before gluing. I tried it on this one weathered copy of Charlotte's Web that had that musty thrift store smell, and honestly the corner laid flat perfectly for the first time in probably 40 years. It was one of those moments where I realized I'd been fighting the material instead of helping it settle. I mean, I've been binding books for maybe 6 years now and never thought to moisten the cloth first. Has anyone else had a basic trick like that just sneak up on them after years of doing it the hard way?

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