Book Repair Part II - It's All About the Glue

So now that you've spent a bunch of time removing crappy glue (see Book Repair Part I), you'll want to find some good glue to use for the new binding. There's a few other items you'll need to get together too. I probably should have discussed materials earlier, but I didn't. So now here's a quick list of all the materials you're going to want to get ready (I'll go more into detail about them as we discuss the process)...


Materials:

• Good quality glue - An archival PVA emulsion should suffice. This is often available at regular art supply stores.
• Small paint brush for spreading the glue.
• Spine lining - A piece of non-stretching, balanced-weave linen or cotton fabric, cut along the grain to a length equivalent to the height of the book, and a width equivalent to the thickness of the spine plus two additional inches. I am using Cambric ungummed cotton tape. I'm sure you can find an equivalent material at a fabric or art store.
• A few sheets of scratch paper slightly longer than the height of your book.
• A few sheets of nonstick paper. (like wax paper, sticker backing paper, silicone release paper, etc.) Also slightly longer than the height of your book.
• A book press (don't worry if you can't find this, we'll discuss a work-around later).
• Weights - It doesn't have to be terribly heavy. I have little 2" x 4" cloth bags filled with BBs. You could use anything similar. Try to use something clean though (no sacks of dirt). 
• And you'll want a little cup of water and paper towels to keep your brush clean in between steps.

Some lazy smart ass out there is probably saying you could just use book tape to fix the binding. That person stumbled into the wrong blog neighborhood and should just put their head down and keep walking and maybe they'll get out of here alive. Working in a library, I spend so many of my waking hours removing adhesive tape from books and paper, that I wish I was Superman so I could fly around the earth really fast to reverse the rotation of the planet, make time go backwards, save Lois Lane, and UN-invent book tape.

In summation, book tape: it doesn't work well, it doesn't last, and you can only get it off with great difficulty.

Pages detached and old glue removed

Now getting back to the actual topic, at this point your pages should all be loose and glue free, and the cover spine should also be glue free. From now on, I will refer to the stack of pages minus the cover as the text block, because that's what it is.

For the next step you need a book press. If you don't have a book press and don't feel like buying one, you could probably build one using a drill, a couple pieces of wood, bolts, wing nuts, and washers. If you don't want to do that, you could try the alternative method pictured below, using stiff boards the size of your book and some bulldog clips or clamps. Ultimately, you need the loose pages of the text block to be held super tight so they don't shift at all. Being able to prop the edge up sideways is also necessary.

Once you've got your book press situation sorted out, you'll need to get the text block set in there. The pages need to be perfectly aligned with the edge to be bound sticking out of the side of the press (see picture below). The most important edge to have absolutely perfectly aligned is the edge to be bound.

This is the trickiest part of the whole repair for me. It's just really fussy business. If the pages are even slightly misaligned, the glue won't be able to hold onto them properly. But modern paper is often coated and slippery so everything wants to move around as you try to get it in the press.

Basically, you're probably going to have to try setting the text block in the press a bunch of times until it's perfect.

When you've got the text block placed in the press, you can turn your attentions to the cover for a second. If you think your cover will fit back onto your text block after it's glued, you can skip this step. However, often once you've reglued the pages, they aren't going to fit back in the cover nicely, especially since the spine lining will add a little thickness. So in that case, you'll need to cut the cover into separate front, back, and spine pieces, as pictured below.

 

Now, get together your glue, brush, and spine lining fabric. Below is a picture of spine lining fabric set next to the strip of spine I had cut off the cover. You can see that it matches the length of the spine and is about three times width of the spine. This excess width is where the front and back covers will be reattached to the text block. You can vary the amount of excess width, just try to keep around 1/2 to 1 inch extra for each side.

Back to the text block in the book press... Take your brush and glue and paste out the edge to be bound. The goal is to get the edge to be bound thoroughly coated and also get the glue to seep in between the pages just a tiny bit. You can foster this seepage by slightly fanning out the pages in the portion of the text block that is sticking out of the press as you apply the glue (I hope that makes sense. It's hard to explain, but even harder to get a picture of when gluing and photographing simultaneously.). Apply the glue by moving the brush from the center to the ends of the spine to prevent accidentally getting the glue down the other edges of the text block. Try to be neat all around and wipe up any spills immediately because PVA glue is mighty sticky.

Once you've got the edge loaded up with paste, place the lining fabric along the spine and press it down well to make good contact. To really get a good stick going, I like to keep applying pressure along to spine for a minute with a burnisher or bone folder if it's handy. You could just use your fingers or the side of your brush handle too. It's not clear in the picture below, but I've kept applying pressure to the point that the I could slightly see the pattern of notches on the edge of the text block through the fabric.

Now place a piece of the nonstick paper along the fabric and lay weight on top of it, so that a light, even pressure is continually applied while the glue dries.

Then take another break. This part of the process is the most critical to the strength of the binding, so I like to leave it overnight to make sure the glue is thoroughly dry. Try not to monkey with the book in the meantime. Final chapter soon...

-J