One of the first projects I wanted to get done was a project for a friend of mine.  She had a scrapbook that her grandmother had put together, mostly of pictures cut out of magazines.  Sort of a do-it-yourself storybook.  It was dated 1924.  Now friend wanted to share it with her granddaughter.  

The problem with the book is that the text block detached from the cover.  See the picture at the top.  The only thing holding the text into the cover was those 2 tiny tabs.  Now, I don’t claim to be a book and paper conservator, but I do have a little skill in that area.  If you are a conservator, please don’t tell me everything I did wrong.  I know I took shortcuts.   Everything I did is reversible and in-line with what the client wanted, and appropriate for the condition and age of the book.  

First thing i did was to trim off the rough edges where someone had torn off the endsheets.  Those are the blank pages at the front and back of a book.  Originally I had planned to sew new ones on, but there wasn’t enough room in the binding for that.  Then I added a piece of super which is cloth a lot like a very loose, super starched cheesecloth.  I left wings so I could use that to re-attach the text block back to the cover. And yes, I was using an Accuquilt qube as a backing press.

Now normally you would add another piece of paper over top of that to protect the spine.  Proper conservation technique dictates that you would add a piece of tissue to the spine, then the cloth, the another paper or tissue.  Again I didn’t have the room in the binding to add that many layers and since the cover was still whole, I didn’t want to re-build the cover to accommodate additional thickness. 

Once the glue dried on that step, I set the text block back into the cover, then using a piece of waste paper, glued up the wings of super, and attached them to each cover.  I inserted a piece of absorbent paper wrapped with a spun poly cloth to keep the glue from sticking where it shouldn’t.  I let it dry under weight for about an hour then covered the super with a strip of paper that matched the original materials to make it aesthetically pleasing.  Normally I would have used a lighter weight tissue for this step, but I used what i had on hand.  Again, I let it dry overnight under weight.

 

And done!  It functions as a book again.  Overall, it took a couple of hours and I’m really glad to have it finished and out of my house.  

 

Edited to add link back: https://wordpress.com/post/battinginthebelfry.com/646