Book Repair

   I have always loved books and reading, maybe more than wood working.  In the early 1980's I took a multi-week community college course to learn book binding and restoration. Book binding requires few special tools but endless patience. Over the last forty years I have bound a few books, I use the tricks and skills to make my own watercolour sketch books and I have repaired (saved) a few books. I am not a trained conservator and I don't do leather binding.

  This last week we have enjoyed some good spring weather and so we've been outside and my time in the workshop has been spent on maintenance sorts of things which are not very interesting, not even to me.

  Mainly my energy has been focused on restoring and re-binding my late Mother-in-Law's old, old cook book.  The cook book  has many loose pages and the cover is falling right off. Clearly it was a well loved and heavily used cook book. I'm told it is the German equivalent of our "Joy of Cooking", a go to book for home cooks.

since the cover is so loose many pages at the front and back are loose too.

I won't re-sew the signatures. I will use latex glue to hold the loose pages in and 

attache the binding tape.

  When dealing with book repairs there are a few special tools:

 Transparent Mend Tissue, a type of tape, that isn't plastic and doesn't yellow.

Linen binding tape - used to attached the cover boards to the body of the book.

sharp scissors, tweezers, very sharp knife, bone folder, straight edge, rubber cement, paste, spray bottle of water, magnifying glass. dental pick and cutting mat.

The first thing I did was go through every attached page and tape any tears in the pages.  The linen tape is 1/2 inch by 12 feet. To repair all the tears I used 15 feet of tape.  There were many torn pages.

All the pages are here, it is just a case of smoothing them out, repairing or trimming the frayed edges and carefully gluing the pages in where they belong.  A full restoration would cut the signatures free and re-sew them while putting the loose pages back.  I have found that sewing signatures requires more practice to do it well than I have acquired.

 Really crumpled papers unfold better when slightly dampened, other wise the paper can be too brittle. I have only five pages left to re-attach, that is about an hour of fussy work, for me.  A skilled experienced book binder would be quicker.  So today I will finish putting the pages back into the book and tomorrow begin the work on the outside. (the covers etc.)

  Happy Spring time everyone.

cheers, ianw