Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Book Up Date - It Is Finished

   The last few photographs of the process show the cloth covering being glued to the boards. Just like all workshop projects, you can never have too many clamps.  I stretched white cloth around the edges of the boards and clamped it 'til dry.


  You can see the binding ribbons that were glued to the spine and will be glued to the boards and held in place by the front and back pages.  When the book is being made, the ribbons are sewn right into the spine of the book.  I wasn't prepared to take the book fully to pieces and re-sew the binding so I glued the new ribbons on.  Modern glues are so good, I have no concern that the ribbon will come loose.


  The book is together.  There are 18 feet of repair tape inside fixing rips.  I was forced to cut down a dozen pages that had deteriorated along the edges to the point there was nothing to save. Those pages were all in the index so almost nothing was actually lost.  All the colour illustrations and recipes  were saved.  As well all the loose pages (25) were re-attached so it is now a complete and usable copy of the original book.


  Cleverly my wife went on line and down loaded a copy of the books cover and printed it out.  After getting a print out the correct size she coloured the lettering to replicate the gold leaf printing and re-created the cover's original back ground colour too.  After all that she made a clear plastic cover to protect all that hard work.  Actually a cook book should come with a plastic cover automatically. 




  Anyone that looks at this effort will realize that it is not a 'restoration', it was a repair, that saved a family favourite cook for another generation or two.  If they can read the old style script!!.

  Actually book binding is a low tech, high satisfaction  craft.  If you search 'book binding DIY' on Youtube the are many  good and informative videos available, Sea Lemon  is one of my favourites for ALL the different sewing methods used to bind books. 

  Cheers Ianw

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