This is an item devoted to the care, keeping, preservation, and
repair of books.  Bookbinding is also fair game, as it applies to
the average home library.  Heck, let's even discuss the care
and preservation practices of the larger public and private
libraries!
  Ask your care/repair/binding questions and let's see if anyone
has knowledge and experience to share in that regard.

48 responses total.

Who does bookbinding in and around Ann Arbor besides the yellow-pages
listings? ? For a while I knew someone that was learning, and I let her
practice on some of my books, which helped us both. Now I've accumulated
moure journals I'd like bound. 

As I always have books whose bindings are failing, I'm interested in *simple*
(but effective) repair techniques.  I've re-glued some, only to have the
glues prove too stiff; but more flexible adhesives haven't held.

I'm quite interested, abstractly, in technique in the sense of what a
professional would do to repair the thing in an attractive way.  But I really
do value books almost entirely for their content, so pretty much anything
that works is all right with me.

I also have a perfect-bound book that I'd like to reglue.  I tried
rubber cement, but that didn't work.  Anyone know what kind of glue
they use to bind paperbacks and where you can get it?

My Reader's Digest _Fix-It-Yourself-Manual_ has four pages on Bookbinding!
Here's what it says about glues:

        "Two types of adhesives are used for book repair, quick-drying
        while (polyvinyl acetate) glue, and slower drying flour paste.
        White glue is used where permanent flexibility is desired.
        Before using, thin with water until glue dripped from a brush
        back into container blends into the surface smoothly. Flour
        paste is used where flexibility is not required. To make it,
        add 1/4 teaspoon flour to 1-1/2 teaspoon water, stir until
        smooth, then cook to consistency of thin cream sauce. Use
        enriched wheat flour of fine pasty grade. Commercial wallpaper
        paste may be substituted."

(I wonder how wallpaper paste does for fine pastry.)

Here's an excerpt from "The Craft of Bookbinding" by Manly Banister,
(1975), pages 16-17.

   "ADHESIVES...Ground hide glue is the traditional book adhesive.
    Ground animal glue, which is similar, can also be used.  Also,
    liquid hide glue.  These glues are used in two forms: hard glue
    and flexible glue...Polyvinyl acetate glue (white glue) is
    also satisfactory for use on the back of a book, as it dries
    flexible.  It is available practically everywhere in the U.S.
    under the trade-name Elmer's Glue-All."
      "Such items as bookbinders' cake flexible glue, and some
    foreign-made resin glues for single sheet binding are available
    from professional bookbinding supply houses."
      "Dried ground glue must be heated for use.  This is the best
    glue for covering with book cloth, paper, etc...."
      "PASTE. Non-warping mounting pastes, made without water,
    are available commerically.  They are supplied to the book-
    binding and picture-framing trades.  Just as good, however, is
    ordinary flour paste made according to the formula given on
    page 157.  Water paste warps, however, and special treatment
    is needed when it is used."

Moving back to the end of the book, page 157 talks more about glues...

    "GLUE.  Hot glue is available in the form of beads or crystals
     and it is called "ground glue."  The best is hide glue...
       Soak 4 oz. by weight...of dry glue in 4 fluid ounces...of
     water for several hours until entirely soaked up by the glue.
     Stir up the gelatinous cake and add a similar quantity more of
     water."  [the rest of the heating process, etc. is edited out
     here; just wanted to give an idea of the quantities involved]

    "...This glue is called hard glue, because it hardens on setting
     and, if bent, will crack or break.  You can make your own 
     flexible glue from the same ground glue as above.  When cooked,
     add 4 tablespoonfuls of glycerin to the given amount and stir
     it in well..."
    "...If you are using cold, liquid hide glue, pour some into a
     separate container and andd 1/2 to 1 teaspoonful of glycerin
     for each fluid ounce...of glue and stir it in thoroughly.  The
     more glycerin you use, the more flexible the glue..."

from page 158...

    "MENDING PASTE FOR BOOK REPAIR.  Take 1 tablespoonful of rice
     flour, 2 tablspoonfuls of corn starch, 1/2 teaspoonful of alum.
     Stir 3 fluid ounces...of water into the mixture..."
       "Warm the mixture in a pan over a slow heat with constant
     stirring until it thickens into a pasty mass.  It is not necessary
     to cook the paste after it has thickened.  Remove from the heat,
     stir in a few drops of oil of cloves, and transfer to a clean,
     scalded glass jar for future use.  Cool before using."

That last paste is mentioned for use in repairing torn pages.

BTW, most of the ellipses in :5 above indicate the remove of 
parenthesized metric equivalent measurements.  I was just too lazy to
type all those numbers...).
 
Does anyone know where the hide glue mentioned in :5 may be found in
Ann Arbor?  Or via mail order?  I recall, from my days as a printer,
that we used to order binding paste (similar I imagine to the "mending
paste" in :5) from the H.B. Fuller Co.  Don't know what other adhesives
they might sell, or if they'd sell to individuals, though.

You can get "Liquid Hide Glue", cat # 942003 (8 oz, $5.25) from
Woodworking Unlimited, 3931 Image Drive, Dayton OH 45414-2591
(1-800-543-7586). That said - try any supply house for woodworkers.
Maybe even Fingerle's!

Thanks!

What is the advantage of hide glue over the polyvinyl acetate?  Is it
vulnerable to fungus the way rice starch is?  I have always used PVA in my
repairs and wonder if all the cooking, etc. is worth the time and effort.

Authenticity! There was not always PVA. Before PVA, hides!

From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be much preference either
way.  Authenticity for hide glue, as Rane says, and convenience for
PVA I suppose are the determining factors.  Both are supposed to turn
out a good binding.

On Monday the sanitary sewer backed up into my basement, 16 inches deep.
The low shelf of bookcases went under, and I have a pile of books soaked
in shit. Many are from a speciality collection and, if not rare, not
easily replaced. My extensive speciality postcard collection got it
too. What should I do? I have to act fast, as rot sets in today.

Cry.

Freeze them until you can figure out what to do?  Spray them with
disinfectant to fend off rot until you can figure out what to do?
Call the special collections people at the UM library and ask them
what to do?  I don't know.  This sounds disastrous and probably more
than one person can handle...I'd cry, too.

Call the special collections dept, and FAST.  Something on a smaller scale
happened to me last summer; the main drain to the house backed up and 
dishwater, shower water, and minimal sewage flooded the whole house (only
one story) about one and a half inches.  I used a hairdryer to assist the
few books I had stacked on the floor waiting for shelf space. Please
call special collections, and try a rare bookseller too who specializes
in preservation and restoration.  Let us know what happens!  I weep on 
your behalf.

Rane, the book restoration specialist at the Bentley Library (can't recall
his name) does field calls from the public on occasions. He is Mr. Wizard.

You might want to try the Ann Arbor Public Library too.  I think
they have an information line, and if not, they probably have at 
least one "book rescuer."

I started with the AAPL, who directed me to Shannon Zachery, a
book conservator at the UM. She said set the books fanned on their
heads in a cool dry place with a fan. The only cool place we have
is the basement (now at least cleaned up), but it isn't dry yet.
Our tiny dehumidifier isn't enough, and we can't start the central
air until the system is checked out. I think I will freeze some.
I was told to not use disinfectant, so I'm working with these
"contaminated books" barehanded (as you can't fan wet books in gloves).
Progress is being made, but we had to cancel a two week trip that
we had planned to leave on tomorrow. We have cried.

I hope your tetanus shot is up to date...good luck.  Did they give
any advice about removing the smell?

No, no advice on removing the smell. Got the central air running, and
it is taking out a couple of gallons of water an hour. Things are drying.
One gets used to the smell  8={. Some books are unrecoverable - those
printed on highly sized paper. These just glue themselves into a solid
block, and even soaking for a couple of days doesn't separate the pages.
This is also a problem with pictures printed on glossy stock - had to
separate those, and interleave paper towel. Even then, those I go to
late had glued themselves to the facing page, so there was some damage.
I would not do this for a living.

In hand papermaking (tray-processed), wet sheets of paper are placed
between pieces of felt.  Don't know if that's of use to you given all
the pieces of paper you need to keep separated, though.  You'd not
want a felt that was dyed...and I suppose for this case, it shouldn't
be very thick or it might distort the binding.  If you had any
particularly valuable books that you wanted to invest the time and
effort in rescuing you could break the binding and separate all the
sections into individual pages.  For papermaking, a stack of wet
paper separated by felt pieces is pressed down to keep the paper
flat and to help remove excess water.  Your concern would not be with
excess water (unless the page has turned to pulp) but with warping
and wrinkling the page.  It wouldn't be fun, and if any book was
extremely valuable, I imagine you'd want to take it to a professional
restorer, anyway.  

Papermaking practices are not entirely appropriate here, as some of this
"paper" is a far cry from just paper. It has pigments and fillers and
especially, sizing, to make it glossy. That's, like, *glue*. I'd be
inclined to do as suggested - just take the books apart, and rebind later
- if I had an army of assistants. I must, however, do what is most
expedient, to do an acceptable job in the time available. I haven't
mentioned my specialty postcard collection yet - more wet paper, but they
were in plastic card holder pages, so I can't pull wet cards out. I'm
slicing them apart with a paper shear, washing the cards, and drying them
in a photo-dryer. I wonder why I'm doing it. The cards don't even come out
close to "new" - and they lose all their stamps. But I couldn't just chuck
them, in part because I'm on summer break (and, just what I wanted to
do....not). 

It's a disaster, to be sure...

Rane, please be careful about freezing the books. Water expands when it 
freezes, and freezing water within paper will destroy the delicate fiber
bonds, especially in old paper.  Coated papers, however, will not be as 
unreceptive to freezing--it may help prevent the breakdown until you can
manually separate the pages.  To unfreeze, DO NOT MICROWAVE--the rapidity
of thawing will ruin the paper.  Put the books pn blotters (paper towels)
and thaw at room temp.

That was a concern. I'm air-drying the books - what a bedraggled looking
lot they are. I froze a good portion of the postcards, and I half expect
they may  be converted to porrige. But, I had no choice, as otherwise
I would have had a mushroom farm. I've heard that freeze-drying is used
for valuable books, but I recall that the freezing is done very quickly
in liquid air, to keep the ice crystals small. I almost wish I had
had one book worth enough to freeze dry, rather than fifty of not great
dollar value, but difficult to come by.

I know the Auburn University Library has some of its most valuable and 
fragile items freeze-dried for storage.  When you get around to the post
card, put them between paper towels that are lightly damp, then as the cards
thaw, change to dry towels as blotters.  Some of my post cards got wet one
time, and I dried them in this manner, then *ironed* them so they didn't 
curl up--set the iron on the lowest temp and put a smooth cloth under the 
card and over the top of it.  Then just press the iron down for a few 
seconds--don't move it over the towel.  This realy helped preserve their
shape.

That photo-dryer for postcards sounds ideal; probably more controllable
than an iron.

The cards mostly come out somewhat warped - probably in part because I'm
overdrying by default (so I don't have to attend them continually). 
There are some 1500 cards. One amazing thing is that about 1 card in
about 40 is *dry*. Hard to believe. 

I was reading about the big flood in Florence, Italy, several
years ago and the problems they had restoring the damaged art.
For the books, they disassembled them, put pieces of blotting
paper between the wet pages, then hung the dampish pages up
to dry.  Then they sprayed the pages with a fungicide, which
they made by dissolving a commonly prescribed antibiotic in water,
and let them dry again.  Finally, they rebound them.  

In Florence, one page of their books is worth my whole library. 
Freezing postcards makes no observable difference in their state
after disinfecting, rinsing and drying. File that fact.

Sorry to hear about your books, Rane.  I think I'll go down and see 
what I've got down there that I don't want to lose.

s/there/in my basement/

Everything is now dry. Some books glued their pages together and even
further soaking would not separate them. I lost about a dozen. The rest
are pretty bedraggled and the covers are distorted, but they are useable
(though their collectable value is decreased). I'm now trying to press
them flatter. Many postcards lost their stamps, but most came out pretty
good. (Is there any chance of any of those 1 cent PC stamps having any
collectors value?) I am going to install a basement high-water alarm:
too bad I didn't think of that 12 years ago. If any of you have valuable
stuff in your basement....a word to the wise....

I guess this item hasn't seen a whole lot of action in a few years.  Although
I haven't gotten into book binding, or book rescue, I have gotten involved
in minimal preservation.  While working at a library I became familiar with
the technique of using clear contact paper to preserve the covers of
paperbacks.  This significantly reduces the wear, in my experience.
 
I've heard that binding, these days, is generally nowhere near the quality
it used to be.  I focused on hardcover books for some time, but it seemed
pointless to spend the extra money on books that may fare no better than
paperbacks.  Lacking endless income, as well, it seemed better to abandon
hardcovers for the most part, unless the books were older, held some
significance, or could be acquired used.

The *boards* are definitely more durable than a paper cover.  But the glued
spines in use these days are, I think, the same as those used in paperbacks,
& are as likely to break or lose pages or sections.  (And I can recall the
time when non-mass-market paperbacks were often sewn, just like most hardbacks
of that time.)

  I won't buy a glued spine book. The last one I bought was a crossword
dictionary, and don't get me wrong, it's excellent, but now it's falling
apart, and I don't want to use it as often. Never again.

I think I spotted a book or two at Borders about bookbinding, if anyone was
looking.  It was near the hobbies/crafts section, I think.  I seem to recall
seeing it near carpentry or sewing.

Jim, then you must not buy many books today.  It's hard to find one available
that's sewn, any more.

  I was talking about the big glued spine books, that usually sell for about
$10. I still buy the small paperbacks, which are over priced, but that is
another item.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss