The Process-Ben's Book
For those of you who really want to know how the process of working with a book binder unfolds, this one's for you. I am currently working with a client who has agreed to allow me to publish a sort of documentary of the conversations and work involved in the rebinding of one of his books. I hope that this proves insightful to any of you who are interested in the process. Please join us from start to finish of this great rebinding project.
Many of my projects are instigated by some casual conversation that goes something like this, "Say, I've got this book . . ." This project was no exception. I was contacted by a former client named Ben, about an older book in his private collection in need of some repair. Upon receiving and reviewing the damage to the book, the following is a copy of an actual message that I sent to Ben, initiating a proposal for the work:
Dear Ben,
Thank you for contacting me regarding your damaged book, Home Gardening. I have taken some photographs of your project and below are attached a selection of the best images for us to start the discussion. Based on my initial assessment, here are my list of concerns for repair of this book:
- the spine cloth is completely missing
- the front and back covers have bad stains that cannot be removed
- the decorative title on the front cover is nice and could be retained, but the upper right corner is damaged, and could not be repaired
- both the front and rear inner joints are split and need reattachment, or replacement
- the text pages are brittle, but still flexible and can be rebound
- illustrations are found throughout the book, but water damage is showing on the corners of most of these pages; this is likely due to the nature of the coated paper stock that the illustrations were printed on, which reacts differently to water than the rest of the text paper
- cover boards are not in great condition and likely should be replaced
- nothing significant about the end papers (they are not printed/illustrated/or have any important manuscript notations), so likely should be replaced with new as they are yellowed and have a broken attachment to the rest of the text
My recommendation would be to completely replace the cover with a new one. This would involve replacing the original front and back boards, and endsheets that are pasted down to the boards. If you would like, I could lift and save the yellow title, but the frayed bit of the worn upper right corner would still be visible. It wouldn’t be as noticeable once it was trimmed up and glued down, but it would hardly look perfect. If you are not really attached to the title, I could make you a new paper label in a similar style font to put on the cover and/or spine instead. That’s up to you. I would replace the end sheets with something neutral cream in color, and as with any typical rebinding, I would remove all of the old spine linings and adhesives, and replace them with new lining material and adhesive to reinforce the structure of the binding. I always place a barrier lining directly on the spine, as the first layer. This lining is made of Japanese tissue adhered with wheat starch paste. The barrier provides some protection to the original book, as it is an easily removed layer, should the book need to be repaired again at some point in the future. I did not come across any major page tears, or damage, but minor tears or page mends would also be included in the price.
At the moment, I don’t have any matching book cloth in stock to approximate the original color, but could order something similar, (by no means exact) for approximately $15/yd. I probably only need half a yard, but one yard is the minimum order. You can see some of the swatches I have below, pictured with the book. Since the cover will be entirely replaced, you also have the option to have this rebound in any color you wish, so let me know if you would like to see more sample swatches. As far as the water damaged pages, I suspect water has traveled through the whole book, and it was just these illustrated pages that absorbed the water in such a way as to stain. I can’t remove the stains, but it should pose no future risk having them there. I saw no evidence of mold or other problems anywhere in the text block.
If you are satisfied with this proposal, I can start work as soon as I obtain your approval. Please contact me to discuss any further questions, or concerns you may have.
Thanks again for your interest,
Jen
missing spine broken inner hinge
illustrated pages water damage
printed title damage to spine, exposed linings
damage to corners stains to cover cloth
new book cloth samples damage to back cover cloth
water damage to illustrated pages, at corners
Tune in soon, for part two of the series. What would Ben do?
Many of my projects are instigated by some casual conversation that goes something like this, "Say, I've got this book . . ." This project was no exception. I was contacted by a former client named Ben, about an older book in his private collection in need of some repair. Upon receiving and reviewing the damage to the book, the following is a copy of an actual message that I sent to Ben, initiating a proposal for the work:
Dear Ben,
Thank you for contacting me regarding your damaged book, Home Gardening. I have taken some photographs of your project and below are attached a selection of the best images for us to start the discussion. Based on my initial assessment, here are my list of concerns for repair of this book:
- the spine cloth is completely missing
- the front and back covers have bad stains that cannot be removed
- the decorative title on the front cover is nice and could be retained, but the upper right corner is damaged, and could not be repaired
- both the front and rear inner joints are split and need reattachment, or replacement
- the text pages are brittle, but still flexible and can be rebound
- illustrations are found throughout the book, but water damage is showing on the corners of most of these pages; this is likely due to the nature of the coated paper stock that the illustrations were printed on, which reacts differently to water than the rest of the text paper
- cover boards are not in great condition and likely should be replaced
- nothing significant about the end papers (they are not printed/illustrated/or have any important manuscript notations), so likely should be replaced with new as they are yellowed and have a broken attachment to the rest of the text
My recommendation would be to completely replace the cover with a new one. This would involve replacing the original front and back boards, and endsheets that are pasted down to the boards. If you would like, I could lift and save the yellow title, but the frayed bit of the worn upper right corner would still be visible. It wouldn’t be as noticeable once it was trimmed up and glued down, but it would hardly look perfect. If you are not really attached to the title, I could make you a new paper label in a similar style font to put on the cover and/or spine instead. That’s up to you. I would replace the end sheets with something neutral cream in color, and as with any typical rebinding, I would remove all of the old spine linings and adhesives, and replace them with new lining material and adhesive to reinforce the structure of the binding. I always place a barrier lining directly on the spine, as the first layer. This lining is made of Japanese tissue adhered with wheat starch paste. The barrier provides some protection to the original book, as it is an easily removed layer, should the book need to be repaired again at some point in the future. I did not come across any major page tears, or damage, but minor tears or page mends would also be included in the price.
At the moment, I don’t have any matching book cloth in stock to approximate the original color, but could order something similar, (by no means exact) for approximately $15/yd. I probably only need half a yard, but one yard is the minimum order. You can see some of the swatches I have below, pictured with the book. Since the cover will be entirely replaced, you also have the option to have this rebound in any color you wish, so let me know if you would like to see more sample swatches. As far as the water damaged pages, I suspect water has traveled through the whole book, and it was just these illustrated pages that absorbed the water in such a way as to stain. I can’t remove the stains, but it should pose no future risk having them there. I saw no evidence of mold or other problems anywhere in the text block.
If you are satisfied with this proposal, I can start work as soon as I obtain your approval. Please contact me to discuss any further questions, or concerns you may have.
Thanks again for your interest,
Jen
missing spine broken inner hinge
illustrated pages water damage
printed title damage to spine, exposed linings
damage to corners stains to cover cloth
new book cloth samples damage to back cover cloth
Tune in soon, for part two of the series. What would Ben do?
Posted by Jen at 1/21/2010 9:35 PM 
Categories: Binding and book repair at Red Letter
Tags: the repair process Ben's books consultation book repair
Categories: Binding and book repair at Red Letter
Tags: the repair process Ben's books consultation book repair
Oh dear, who would have thought so much work would be needed for such a little book. The broken inner hinge is painful to look at. What's the usual culprit of an inner hinge breaking anyway?
Reply to this
Yes, there is a lot of work that goes into repairing books. Thanks for noticing! If you think about it from a mechanical standpoint, it's not enough for the book to look good when it's done, it has to open, and flex, and function too. You always have to take that into consideration when doing a repair, considering materials that allow the book to "do what it has to do." Over-engineering a repair can be just as bad as under-engineering one, and of course there will always be limitations to what one can do.
Regarding the inner hinge break, the hinges are the most common place for damage like this to occur. Books generally have some type of hinge cloth that is adhered across the spine of the book, and pasted down under the end sheets. This is where the strength of the attachment between the text block, and the cover, lies (there can be other types of attachments too depending on the binding, but your basic "library style" hardcover will usually just have a hinge cloth). In the case of Ben's book, the hinge cloth that was used was a pretty weak cloth, and so broke down very easily. The hinges tend to break so easily because they bear the weight, and action of repeated opening of the covers. In a hard cover book, the cover doesn't flex, so the stress rides along that hinge. It tends to be one of the first things to go in most cases.
Reply to this