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INITIAL CREDITS
Hi, welcome back. This is Evan. This is part 5 of Universidad Francisco Marroquín’s series on book repair.
Today we’re going to do a recase, and I’m going to show you the problems that we are going to work on today.
This is when the hinges of a book are failing but the case is OK.
MATERIALS
Paper knife, microspatula, lifting knife, bone folder of Teflon, and also a bone folder of bone,
scissors, a scalpel with a metal straightedge (it can be a ruler), spring dividers,
an awl, needles and thread,
and finally two brushes: one for PVA and one for methylcellulose,
two double-folio end sheets for each book you'll repair,
a Western paper lining, Japanese paper, a textile lining,
two boards, heavy weight paper, and book cloth.
It would also be useful to have some newsprint on hand as waste paper, and that should be all you need.
PROCEDURE
This first one is an example where the first hinge is OK, but the second is completely detached.
Then I have another example, which we'll work on, where both hinges are completely detached, like this and like that.
So, the way we are going to fix them is by separating the text from the case,
so it makes two parts: basically the text and the case,
and we are going to consolidate the text, reform the case or repair it a little bit,
and then put them back together again.
So, the first way we are going to do that is you need to separate the endpapers;
you need to break the hinge if there's still any remaining left.
So, what we're going to do is try to separate it by pressure
and if that doesn't work I'm going to use a scalpel and just cut it.
This is kind of hard. I think this is a synthetic glue,
so I'm going to take the scalpel and a straightedge
and simply separate them without trying to cut the cloth.
I don’t want to cut the cloth because it gives me the option to reuse my case covers if the case is in good shape.
And if the case is in good shape and you want to reuse it,
sometimes it’s easier to reuse the case instead of making a new one.
But other times if the case is in bad shape you want to remake the case in any event.
So, this case is in pretty good shape and I might reuse this.
I probably would reuse this if I was going to… (if I was) in the middle of this process, and you’ll see.
So, I separated the text from the case.
Next I want to reconsolidate the text block by taking off the old adhesive which clearly didn’t work over here,
and I can tell right now that this is a synthetic glue.
I think it’s going to be quite hard to take off, so that’s why I wanted to choose another example here
which I think is a natural glue, an animal glue, which in book repair you’ll see quite often,
so I’m going to go through both examples here.
I’m going to use working boards to protect the case blocks when I put it in the lying press to my right,
and then you’ll see how you can take off the existing layers of glue and you can see the paper here also.
We’re going to take it all off.
So, I'm using the lying press, this is actually called the casing press,
and you can use it as a vertical press,
or in this case as a horizontal press so it gives you a little more versatility.
So, first I’m going to try to take off the paper with a flat edge such as with a paper knife or with a microspatula.
Then after that I’m going to put on some… animal glue comes off very easily with moisture;
so methylcellulose or wheat starch paste or corn paste will work very well also.
If there are endbands, you’d like to keep the endbands because we’re going to reapply them
and you can see here’s one endband and it’s already coming off.
So, when I get to that level, when I get to past the craft paper I’m going to take it off, put it aside,
and then reattach it when I rebuild the linings on the spine.
There’s that first endband; now this glue under here is animal glue, you can tell by its smell, it smells…
I don’t know how to describe it but it’s got its own unique smell,
and especially when it gets wet, you’ll be able to, with experience, identify it pretty quick.
Alright, that's good enough for now.
What I'm going to do now is put on a poultice, which will really just hold moisture on it,
so it can penetrate the high glue, the animal glue, and loosen it up where I can just scrape it off much easier.
And so, I have some methylcellulose prepared here,
I think it's about 2.5% by weight, but we don't really use paste down here,
so you can use paste as well, but both will be fine.
I'm just going to put it on and let it sit, just glop it on and let it sit for a while,
probably about, I don’t know, maybe two minutes, then reapply another layer, and then see if I can scrape anything off.
Now the other text block is a synthetic, it’s from I think the 60’s or 70’s, 1960’s or 70’s,
when synthetic glues were much more common, and synthetic glues can be really difficult to take off,
so reconsolidating the text block with synthetic adhesive can be really tough,
I mean, if you can’t take off the glue you’re not going to be able to reconsolidate the text blocks,
you can’t be able to get into the signatures and re-tip them together, so, we’ll see that example in a minute,
but this high glue should be coming off pretty quick.
So I’m just going to let this wait for a minute so the moisture can get into the glue.
And the goal of this is to... when I use the new glue I want to tip the end of the signatures back together,
so I want to get as much as I can off of the original.
It looks like the moisture penetrated pretty well; everything is a lot easier to take off now as you can see.
It might need another treatment of moisture here, but let me just take off what I can at this point.
And it’ll be useful to put your… to pull off on some waste paper,
or some board, or anything you really like to get it away from your text block would be fine.
And this glue is brittle, that’s a pretty characteristic of animal glue. You can see it’s when I drag my knife across it,
you can actually hear the sound also but it’s very brittle and that’s why moisture works really well in this case,
because it really softens that brittleness. Heat you can also use, heat will soften it a little bit,
but if you do use heat, just make sure that you don’t burn your text block.
I guess you can say the same about moisture;
if you use moisture, you don’t want too much moisture to seep into your sections,
but I like moisture because you do have a bit more control.
So, I’m going to reapply because, after I got that first layer of paper off the glue underneath is still pretty dry.
It’s still pretty brittle. So I'm just going to glop it on again, let it sit for a while, and then go at it again.
The steps I’m doing now, and what I will be doing with regard to the text block, are pretty typical of case bindings,
so case bindings are very… began in about the 1820’s, and really took off.
It’s the form that books are produced today even.
It’s where the text block is produced separately from the case,
and then they’re all put together in a separate process.
And because they’re separate processes the text block is its own unique animal,
and then the case is its own unique animal,
so they can both be treated separately before you put them back together again.
So, I think I’m just going to leave this dry, or let this dry right now.
Usually, you probably want to let this dry a little bit more, I’m sorry… let the moisture seep in a little bit more,
but for the purposes of this video we’ll see what we can get off here and then we’ll move on to lining the spine
which would be the same in both cases in the natural glue and also in the synthetic glue case.
I think this endband is ready to come off.
When I lifted this endband here, it looked like a lot of the glue came up without a doubt, which is good.
But it also looked like the backs of the sections, the paper parts also came up, and that would be bad.
In bad examples of that, if the cases are bad you would have to regard your sections
and then re-sew them all together.
It’s basically separating the sheets of your book, so I don’t want to do that.
I just want the endband and the glue and this mull which is a mesh-like material,
which is used to combine the text block with your case.
OK. That came off pretty well. I’m using a bit of pressure but I’m not using too much pressure because certainly,
like I said, when pulling off the endband, I definitely don’t want to harm the paper,
I don’t want to harm the sections which are at this point pretty moist from all the methylcellulose that I just put on.
So, you want to be pretty careful not to ruin the spine of your book.
And you can see now how everything’s coming up pretty well.
I think this is almost there, I think I’m going to do one more reapplication,
and hopefully I can quickly take off that last layer of glue.
And the glue is brown. Another characteristic of animal glue is it’ll be yellow or brown, or a pretty dark neutral color.
The spine is in pretty good shape though.
It’s still hard, it’s still very compact, so yes, I’m going to put one last layer on quickly,
and let’s see how much we can get off.
And you can see how I’m not putting any of the methylcellulose or the moisture on this part here
because the glue already came off.
If I did that, I’d just be moistening the backs of the paper and weakening that when I run my knife over it,
so I’m staying away from there as much as I can.
You can see these endpapers; you want to make sure not to lose these also
because when you put them back, you want to make sure you have them around.
So I’m going to put them on top of the linings that I’ll be putting on later.
OK, I found my knife here, and see what I can get off here.
There, it’s coming a bit, it's still a bit brittle, I probably should’ve left this quite a bit longer
but for the purposes of this video, you can get the idea.
It’ll almost be white the spine; it’ll be as if it’s fresh paper.
For example, in that section right there, and that section there they look pretty white.
Alright, now I didn’t get as much of it off as I wanted to or as you should when you try this,
but the idea is exactly the same.
You want to take off as much of the original glue as you can without harming the paper folds of your spine.
I’m going to take this out and continue with the other book, and build my linings up.
I could build my linings up on this, and if I did, it would be in the exact same way that I’ll be doing on the other.
So, I just used this example so you could see how to take off the original glue.
Getting back to this first text block, I’m going to try to peel off the layers.
And I’ve actually cheated a little bit. We tried using moisture on this spine,
and also a little bit of heat and nothing really worked to get the glue off.
So, the goal here is going to be to get this lining of craft paper off as much as we can,
and then we’ll rebuild the text block to make it ready to put into the case, and I’m going to use my microspatula.
OK. So, you want to get all that off, but in this example it’s going to take a little bit more time,
so I’m just going to move on.
And what I’m going to do is reline the spine, but put new endpapers on and then reinforce the endpapers
by sewing through the synthetic adhesive.
The way I’m going to do that is I’m just going to tip on some new endpapers which we made previously.
They’re just double folio and a little heavier weight than a text, and I’m going to tip them on with PVA.
You can use any acid free adhesive. There’re different kinds of PVA out there, they’ll all be fine.
We just want to make sure it’s acid free in conservation work.
So, I’m putting a little line, a little bit of adhesive on the edge.
The endpaper I’m using right now is a little bit oversized, and that’s not a problem,
that’s on purpose because it’s much easier to trim an endpaper after it’s on than it is before.
So, basically the overhanging parts, I’ll trim near the end of the process, and that’s no problem,
we’re going to do the same for the other side after I bone it down.
I’m making one end perfectly square, this end here,
and the other end is the one that’s a little bit oversized as you can see.
The danger when you’re working with PVA is putting too much on and basically making a mess,
and that’s one of the dangers I should say.
It’s really easy to just put too much on and adhere the pages of your text blocks together
and that’s obviously a bad thing to do but it’ll also make your book not look as nice,
so less is more with PVA a lot of the times.
I’m going to attach the other endpaper,
so the corner that will be flush is going to be on one side flush and on the other, oversized.
That’ll just make it easier to trim.
What I need to do is to attach the endpapers to the book a bit more strongly.
So what I’m going to do is sew them through the spine and that will really strengthen the bond between the endpapers
and the text block and because the endpapers as well as the linings are what connect the text to the case,
it’s very important that they’re pretty strong.
So, it’s OK also to tip them on if you like, but I prefer to sew them as well,
and what I’m going to do is use my needle and thread and put it together like a pamphlet.
I’m just going to do a pamphlet stitch.
I need a little bit of thread here; about three times the height of your book is a rule of thumb I think,
something like that should do.
I’m going to thread my needle, and before I sew I’m going to make some holes where I’m going to sew,
so that’ll make my job a bit easier.
Also, I actually need to sew this because this is a double folio,
so these two folios are not really attached to each other, so they need some more strength.
So, the way to thread to this needle is to just put it through the hole,
and then you want to unwind the end of your thread just a tiny bit so your point can go through it
– Oops! I missed it. –
So after I go through – It’s kind of hard to do – but after I go through I’m going to pull it down,
pull it together, this might be hard to see but you’re going to need to learn it, so pull it down,
pull it through and pull until you can hear a snap, that’s called, I guess, locking it in.
So, now I’m going to sew this, but like I said, I’m going to first make my holes, my guide holes using a pretty sharp awl.
So, the way I’m going to do that…
The holes can be somewhat arbitrary because you’re putting on something completely new onto the book.
You could use the same channels that the book was originally sewn in for continuity
and that’s probably recommended but it’s hard to see the original channels here
with all that synthetic glue on there, so they’re going to be pretty arbitrary, and I’m going to make,
let’s see, three or five is usually the norm, I think I’m just going to make three,
but feel free to use any number and any style that you like.
I’m just going to make sure these are pretty tight.
OK, there’s one, there’s one in the middle, here’s another at the end,
and then I’m just going to split these two with two more there.
I might as well do the other side before I start sewing.
And you want to try and actually get through some of the adhesive if it’s possible that is still on there.
Actually, that synthetic glue is really super strong and it’ll be here for a long time,
so getting through there will just attach your endpapers to your text block with a little bit more strength.
With your pamphlet stitch now, we are going through the outside,
go through the hole that’s adjacent to the origin or to the first hole that I used, then go out,
pull it a little bit tight, then continue to the last hole,
come back in through the second hole I went into, pull it a bit tight.
I’m going to skip the first hole, or the origin, and then go in this hole, out through the last hole,
pull it a bit tight, in through this hole, and finally out through the same hole that I started with.
And so now what I have is two threads that I’m just going to tie into a knot after I pull it tight,
and then that’ll just reinforce what you have.
Another way to work is to make holes also in the first section of your book
and then make a link stitch to both of the endpapers as well as the first section of your book,
so that gives you added strength.
You can also, not overcast or oversew, but you can also... there are other ways to add extra strength, they’d all be fine.
So, I made a square knot here, and that should hold fine.
So, I’m going to do the same on the other side, get it right this time first time,
and then after that we’ll be ready to add layers of linings as well as what’s going to attach the text to the case,
which is, in this case we’re going to use what’s called crash or mull, super, cambric can be used;
a textile lining is a pretty general way to call it.
In through the first hole in the middle, out through one adjacent to it, it can be this hole or it can be that hole,
the pattern isn't going to change, the pattern is going to stay the same.
I’m ready to put it in the lying press or casing press over here.
I trimmed, so there’s about four millimeters of overhanging thread, you don’t want too little
or else if the knot frays a bit can completely come apart.
But you don’t want too much because it’ll be on your spine and it might stick out a bit.
So, I’m going to put this back in boards and then bring it over to the press.
Now, if this were a book with the animal glue like in the first example,
this spine should be completely white and with the backs of the original section still…
or you’ll be able to get at the original backs of the sections.
So, since I can’t and since I’m just using the synthetic adhesive as the first base,
I’m just going to build on top of that adhesive, so I’m just making this a little flatter.
What I’m going to do is put a reversible layer of long fiber tissue or Japanese tissue onto it and then we’ll build from there.
I’m going to be using PVA but, what’s more common is to use a paste,
like a wheat starch paste or a different type of paste because that’s sometimes a little reversible
and the climate down here is almost tropical so there’re a lot of insects,
and insects love paste so we’re not going to use paste but feel free
and it’s probably a little more common if you’re in the United States, I think.
So, I’m going to use PVA, I have the long fiber tissue ready to go,
you’ll see it’s a little bit oversized, it’s quite big for it and that’ll be fine.
I’m just going to paste up…
I’m going to glue up the spine, put the Japanese tissue down and then after it dries I’m going to cut around it.
I’m just trying to get the spine, if I get any onto the endpapers, if I get any glue that comes over,
that’s really not too big a problem but you want to keep that to a minimum to make the best repair you can.
Long fiber tissue is so, I don’t know, fibrous,
that I don’t want to bone it down with my bone folder too much,
or else the paper will come down and I don’t want to really hammer it in there.
What I want is instead kind of just press it down and let the glue do the work.
When I put the glue on, if I was doing this on a book where I could get at the spines and tip the sections together,
I’d really want to work in the glue, so that I could tip together the sections.
But in this case with the synthetic adhesive as the first layer that I’ll be building on really, it’s not that big a deal.
So, I just padded it down, and now I’m just going to use a somewhat hard brush, just pad it down a bit more.
And I use the brush because the Japanese tissue, as I mentioned, was... it likes to come off,
it likes to almost get fuzzy;
the fibers like to break apart if you really try to work it too hard, so this is a nice way to softly put the paper to the glue.
The nice thing about PVA is it'll dry pretty quickly.
If you’re using paste, you’d want to let this dry overnight,
or you can kind of cheat and use a hair dryer to dry it a little quicker,
but this will dry in less than ten minutes. It’ll dry in ten minutes.
I think for the purposes of this video we’ll go a little sooner than we might otherwise,
but in general you really want to make sure this is dry because it’s such an integral layer to your restoration.
OK, so that’s our first layer, but still we have nothing to attach the text to the case,
so what we’ll be doing is using what’s called the textile lining which can be cambric or mesh, or mull.
In this case we use a mesh, that’s pretty good, so, what I’m just going to do is glue up the...
Oh! First I need to size this, so I need to make sure that this is the right size and...
it turns out that this is actually small, but you would like this so it comes out maybe two millimeters
from both the head and the tail, so basically almost the entirety of the spine you’d like to be covered with the crash,
or the mull or the lining.
So, you want it to be overhanging actually,
you want it to be overhanging the spine because this is the first part
that’s going to be attached to the case when we put it back together.
So, it’s actually going to be – this is going to stay, we’re not going to trim this like we did for the Japanese paper.
So, I’m going to put this down with some PVA again, and if you had a book that was with an animal glue,
you would be using PVA in this case as well,
so paste in the first lining if you have a book with animal glue, but in the second linings and more, PVA.
Directly after I put this on, I’d like to put on a lining of Western paper, a shorter fiber paper,
because that will… the more linings you have, the less your book wants to open,
and so it’s a balance deciding how many linings you’d like to put on.
A rule of thumb is just to put one lining of Western paper on after your textile lining,
but with experience you’ll be able to vary how many linings you’d like to put on, depending on the weight of the book,
its fragility, and a number of other factors.
OK, so I’m going to put this on by stretching it over,
putting some more glue on so the glue really works in between the holes of the mesh,
or the textile and really adheres itself to each other as well as the linings of the spine.
And then after this, I’m going to use my bone folder
to impress the glue in between those holes and with the spine also.
I mean, the goal of using a textile lining is its strength, rather than paper it’s stronger,
and the mesh factor of it, the fact it has holes really increases its strength
because it allows more glue per, I guess, square inch or per any unit of distance, allows more glue to adhere.
So I’m using a bit of pressure here, and working it in a bit, wiping off any excess of my bone folder,
trying to define the edge a bit as well.
What’s very important, I should emphasize is the edge of your book, or the edge of your spine.
If the textile lining isn’t adhered to the edge of your spine it’s going to peel off
and since it’s really so integral to the text-to-case connection,
when that peels off your book will probably need another conservation treatment eventually.
I have a Western paper lining that I’m going to put on top of it, so I have my piece,
let me just make sure that it’ll fit.
So I’m going to put some fresh PVA on the spine, and then put this down;
that will be the last lining that we do for the recase procedure.
I guess the text is almost ready to go; we still have to trim those endpapers, but structurally it’s basically there.
Now, if you have endbands and, this book didn’t but the first book we did did.
If you have endbands, this is the time to put them on, so you put them on at the top and the bottom.
You can also glue out your lining and that’s probably a little more common
because this is going to expand a bit more than the material on my spine will,
but this will work too, and this should fit nicely over, and I’m going to press down and then bone it down.
If there were adhesive here, the synthetic adhesive that we started from,
you should bone it down enough where you can actually almost see the sections again.
In this case though, like I said about that synthetic adhesive, it’s kind of obscuring everything,
but I think it’s important to include in this video because most books nowadays all use synthetic adhesives,
so you should get used to them in your library or institution.
So this is good, I’m going to let this dry and turn my attention towards preparing the covers again.
So, there’s two ways to recase a book; you can use the existing covers or you can use new covers.
So, I have two examples here, what we can do is look at them and see what we’d like to do.
This is an example of a book that I think new covers would be nice, but they might not be necessary,
this is a strong case, you want to keep your case, especially if there is historic material
or artefactual value in the covers of the book or the endpapers of the book.
But I should like to mention that a recase in this way that I’ve been teaching is for general collections only,
and special collections have a whole different set of considerations.
So, in this instance I’m going to try and reuse the covers
and the way I’m going to do that is by lifting the original pastedowns,
and using what’s left, using the board and the cloth, and not separating the covers from the spine piece.
I’m going to start lifting this one because I’m going to reuse it.
I’m going to lift the pastedowns starting at the edges,
and you just want to find a place where you can find where you can start lifting.
This one looks good, it was rocking up a little bit already and that’s how you want to start.
Sometimes you can even dig in under the pastedown a little bit into the cloth,
and that’ll give you an opportunity to lift a little bit of the board too, and that’ll be fine,
because, keep in mind, we’ll be taking this off, so the cleaner you can get it off, the better,
the less you’ll be able to see under, but structurally it’ll be fine either way.
So, this was a book we prepared previously that is... the front hinge was fine, the back hinge was a problem,
so what we did was, we took off the cover, prepared the text block like we just did, with the endpapers,
the textile lining, and then the Western paper lining, and this would have head bands which we put on also,
and as you can see, the endpapers here are still oversized.
So we’re going to trim those in a second, but getting back to the cover,
I lifted this already, and as far as it goes, this came off well, I wouldn’t have liked to take this part off
but often times when you’re doing this procedure, the cloth can be a bit tricky,
so, whatever will work structurally will be fine for your collection.
I did leave a little bit here though, so I can show you; I’m going to take my lifting knife,
which is a very slight bevel but pretty sharp, and continue working this.
So I worked in from the corners and this came up pretty easily, this example.
So I'm going to work in it from the corners, you want to be a bit delicate because you don’t really want to rip,
you want to get it off in one piece if you can.
This one came off really easily, a little bit of board which would be fine,
and now basically we have a case, original case, ready for a text-block and new pastedowns.
So, in the example that we pre-made, all I need to do here is trim these endpapers,
and then recase it like I would as if I’m making a new book, so let’s do that.
And after we do this book, I have another pre-made example where we are going to remake the case.
So basically make a new case, and then put a new text block into it.
So I’m using a cutting mat,
I’m going to trim by putting a straightedge just over that endpaper and just at the edge of the text-block.
I want to make sure obviously not to cut much of the text-block or any of the text-block,
but I also don’t want the endpapers to overhang.
And then I’m going to do this side, over here, same for the other side.
So, basically I’m ready to case this in, but before I do so there’s another example
that I’d like to show where... if you’re going to restore a text-block and you want to make a new case,
I can show you how to do that now.
And I have a premade example – we’re going to tidy up here a little bit – where the materials are already precut,
so, what I’ll be doing is putting together this book which has a cover that has very little information that we care about;
there’s a bunch of tape on it, electrical tape and masking tape, and so I took it apart,
it was already coming apart, and this is the case we don’t want to use again.
So, we take it off, we prepare to throw it out, and the text-block is basically ready to go as well,
so what we need to do is make a new case.
So I have some precut materials here that I’m going to make into a case.
The boards are pre-sanded on the front and cut to size, the cloth is oversized, that’s fine, we’re going to trim it after.
So glue out the first board, put it down and then line up the other pieces
so that I have a square case and it stands up straight on the shelf.
So I’m just going to start with this first piece, I’m going to glue it out with PVA,
or PVA-methylcellulose mix, or any adhesive you like that is neutral or is in common use in conservation.
This is just straight PVA.
We’re not using Binder’s Board or Davey Board, but a little bit of a thinner board,
it’s not only more common down here in Guatemala,
but it is also more appropriate to the size of the book I’m working on.
I don’t need really thick boards for a book that for example might be pretty thin; it’ll be not only out of place,
but if the book isn’t sitting comfortably between its covers, that could lead to some problems down the line.
So I’m gluing this out, the edges are pretty important because you don’t want those peeling up,
so I’m just going over those again.
And I should mention that you want everything with the grain vertical to the spine,
everything such as cloth or paper, or the board that I’m using,
so everything is basically more in line with each other,
and when moisture attacks the book things expand in tandem and contract in tandem.
Now I’m going to bone this down after lining it up and I have my Teflon folder here.
I’m giving it a bit of pressure, what’s most important is that the glue spreads out evenly.
Next I’m going to make a mark between the board and what’s going to be the spine piece of this case,
about five millimeters away from that board.
This is going to be the groove that separates the cover of the spine and the start of the board,
and each book is going to have its own size of its shoulder,
but a good rule of thumb is anywhere from four to seven millimeters will be fine or is where it’s usually going to be.
So I’m going to make my mark there, and I make my mark with my dividers,
strong enough so that I can see it, but not strong enough that it makes a giant hole in the cloth
that you’ll be able to see when everything is done.
So I’m just going to glue this out, put it down and then do the other one, do the other board.
So this long straightedge here is going to be really useful in making my boards straight and making my case square,
so I want to line up the top of my spine piece with the square straightedge, so that I have an even space in the groove
an even groove here, then I’m going to bone it down and I’m going to do the last piece.
You want to fold up any of your used newsprint,
or any of your used waste paper that you use because having a tidy shop will,
everything is going to be a lot cleaner if you have a tidy shop.
So again I’m going to line up the straightedge with the first board I put down,
I’m going to make my mark the same distance that the first groove is,
the first space is, and then I’m going to put this down.
OK, so we put it down, get that bond well, and to emphasize the bond,
to really make sure that the bond is even and strong,
I’m going to put it in between boards and give it a press in this big press we have behind me,
so we take these boards.
I’m going to cover the cloth with newsprint so it doesn’t get dirty from the boards and then I’m going to just put it in.
So I’m putting this in between boards, I’m going to nip it in the press,
and I’m going to try to put the boards directly under the screw,
so you want to center up your boards as best you can, so the pressure really is even.
So I’m going to put it down now, and it doesn’t need to be too hard, just some pressure.
Again, the idea here is just to spread out the glue evenly across the entire board so it adheres strongly to the cloth.
So you want that for about anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes would be fine,
so for the purposes of this example, I’m going to take it out.
So, I took the case out of the press, and I forgot to mention that you’d like to put a spine piece over your spine
so that the platen is pressing down evenly across the whole of your case,
not just parts on the parts with the board.
But anyway, so now I took the case out and I’m ready to trim it and prepare it,
so it’s just like the original covers that we made in the first part;
these over here that I’m going to pull out, these ones that we prepared.
It’s going to look basically like this.
So, the way I’m going to get even turn-ins here,
I’m going to use my spring dividers and mark them to about five eighths of an inch or about two centimeters all around.
This is variable, you can use any different width, whatever you prefer; whatever looks best will be fine,
again, this is basically an aesthetic decision about how big you’d like your turn-ins.
If you can see I‘ve made marks from the edges of my board;
one here, one here, and I’m going to trim that, I’m going to connect those by using my blade and trimming that off.
I’m doing the same over here on this end, one mark over here, and one mark over here,
and I’m pushing my divider up against the board so it’s even,
so basically you’ll see this is like a line that I’m going to cut right there,
and see that’s my last mark and that was my first mark.
Basically, you don’t need to make lines if you don’t want to, and I typically don’t,
I find it’s much easier and faster just to make marks where you need them
instead of using your pencil to make an infinite number of marks.
So, I made that mark there, mark there, and I’m going to continue making these marks all around,
and then I’m going to cut where I made those marks, so there, and there, here and here.
Having a sharp blade when you cut cloth is important because if your blade isn’t sharp you’re going to...
the fibers in the cloth are going to, not realign but they’re going to be somewhat wobbly
and be able to come out and you can pick them off,
so it’s best to have a sharp blade where you won’t have any loose fibers coming out
and you’ll have clean, nice cuts.
Now, you see, the way I’m moving the case around is just a habit that I like,
basically doing the same motion here with my left hand
holding the ruler or the straightedge and my right hand cutting,
and what’s moving is the case, it’s not me, the way I’m cutting is going to be the same,
and the more you’re able to develop habits that you like and you like to do,
the more you’ll be able to move a little faster.
If you’re going to do a lot of recases, if you’re going to do recases in batches,
you’d like to have precut materials, precut boards and precut spine strips
as well as precut linings that we used in the first half for when we consolidated the text.
Having strips precut is going to make your work go a lot faster also,
so it would be a good idea if you’re doing the work in bulk
to have some precut strips of all the materials that we used today,
so you can use it for any size of book that might come into your shop.
OK, so, getting back to the case, it’s almost there, we’ve got a nice window here that we’re going to put aside,
and so we have a case with equal edges and what we want to do now is turn it in,
make turn-ins so the case looks very much like these, or actually more like this one.
We’re just going to glue it up, but before we do, I’m just going to emphasize the folds
and that’ll just make it fold easier when it’s glued up.
Now this cloth is very thin cloth, I don’t think it’s starch-backed, but it’s backed with something,
and I’m not really sure what it is.
You’re free to use any type of cloth: buckram, I guess you could use paper if you like,
but you want something that’s neutral and that’s backed with a neutral material and that’ll last on your shelves.
I think this cloth also tends to show through on the front a bit,
so if you have a cloth like that, the way you put your glue on to your boards,
it’ll show, so you’d like to be even however you do it.
OK, so now I’m ready to glue these up and turn them in.
So if I turn in like this, first there’s going to be some excess here and I don’t want that,
so what I’m going to do is make a cut about 45°, and you can measure this, you can mark this,
you can do this in a number of ways but about two boards thicknesses away from this corner here,
this is the board that I’m talking about, so about two of these thicknesses away from this corner
I’m going to make a 45° angle or thereabouts, it doesn’t need to be exact,
but you want it to be even with all the others.
So, about two board thicknesses will be, I think, right about there, so I’m going to make my cut right there.
Now, using a scalpel at first will give you better cuts and more even cuts,
and measuring them too, but with a little experience using scissors will go a lot faster.
So this is good, so what we have here now is less material, it’s not going to bulk up at the corner,
and when I paste this side out I’m going to just press down there and do that,
and that turns out to be a nice sharp edge, a nice sharp turn-in.
OK, so when I glue up – you always glue up your head and tail before you glue up your fore edges –
so I’m going to do this edge first, then this edge and then you know, this one then that one.
Some people glue out all the edges and then do it, but I’m going to do one at a time.
Working on the edge of a table you’ll find it might be easier for you, it works for me.
And if you have a cloth such as this, basically any cloth you use can get burnished
if you have a bone folder that’s actually made of bone,
so keep in mind when you’re going to bone down anything, bone down cloth,
you’d like to use a Teflon bone folder or you can use your original bone folder,
but it should be interleaved by some waste paper.
So, what’s first important to me is this edge, so I’m pushing up the cloth to the edge of the board,
I’m using my palm; that works well; you can also use your bone folder.
I’m not pressing too hard yet; I just want it to go over evenly.
OK, so that went over and now I’m going to do the turn-ins like I showed earlier,
so there’s still some glue here in this corner, so what I want to do is press it down, and then later,
when we do the fore edge, I’ll put that over, but I want to do the turn-ins for these now.
And you can see here, depending on how porous your cloth is, some glue might seep out.
So understanding your materials and getting comfortable with them is very important;
you’ll know how everything reacts and you won’t be shocked by anything,
you’ll basically know how to make the best repair you can do.
So I did those turn-ins, I’m going to do the other side now.
When you do this, be very careful that if some PVA seeps out like it did, a little bit there,
you don’t want it to get on your bone folder, or if it does,
you need to wipe your bone folder off immediately or else you’re going to spread that glue all around your cloth,
that’s not going to look very good.
So now the fore edges, this is important to keep in mind again
that you do the head and tail first and then the fore edges.
The reason that I was taught to do that was the way books are shelved. It has to do with the way books are shelved,
since they’re usually shelved on their bottom, it’s the bottom edge that’s most important...
it’s most important that that bottom edge is flat,
and when you make the turn-in on this fore edge last, the bottom is flat
but the fore edge isn’t, so whenever you make a turn-in
you’re going to have a little bit of a bump of the cloth
and so you want the bump to be on that fore edge, not on the bottom or top.
And finally the last edge.
And so what we have is a new case.
You might say that one might be faster than the other,
depending on your material, depending on what you’re working with.
If you’re working with a book with very, very shabby covers, ones that are frayed at the edges, frayed at the corners
and are not going to work with bad cloth or anything like that,
then making a new cover is an investment that you should do.
However with covers in good shape or pretty decent shape that can last for a long time,
there’s really no problem reusing them.
If you have the time, while you’re at it, it’s best to probably make a new case,
but if it’s important to you, and it does take less material or probably less time, you can reuse this case.
What we’ll do is case it in as normal and we have this one here which is going to fit very nicely for this book.
We’re only going to do one example because it’s the same procedure really, and we’re going to do this one,
but keep in mind that you have two options when you come to recasing a book:
to use the original or to use a new one.
I felt it’s important that you guys know how to make the case.
So, to case this book in, I don’t know if you’re going to have bookbinding experience or not
but it’s pretty normal to a normal case binding,
you’re going to miter the edges up to the base of the shoulder
to kind of reduce the bulk that all this material added on to each other might add, so 45° is fine,
again the goal is just to minimize the bulk at this section here when you eventually paste it down.
I’m going to miter the edges; I’m going to trim the pastedown just about a millimeter or so
because it’s going to expand when I glue it out, so I’m going to trim it just on a board,
and I like to use my eye on this but using your dividers would be fine also, or make your mark also.
You want this just about a millimeter like I said, although this might be a little more.
Now again this was just for the pastedown or the page that is going to be pasted back into the covers
and I want to do it on both sides.
So, now we’re ready to go and recase this. It fits well and I want to make sure – and this is not a small point –
but you want to make sure that your book is right side up.
If you do this very often it is very likely, although I’ve never done it yet, to put your book in upside-down
in which case you’ll have to redo all the work.
So this fits well. I like it. I’m just lining it up so that it’s even at the head and the tail squares,
even at the fore edge, and tight.
So it doesn’t matter which way you start to case in, or which side you choose to do first, front or back,
but what is going to happen is the way I lined it up right now is the way I want to case it in,
so I’m going to keep this tight, put some pressure here so nothing really moves, then open up the case.
We’re definitely going to want to use some waste paper to protect the rest of our text block
and after I paste out you’ll see, we’ll take this out also.
So I’m going to use PVA – PVA or PVA mixes are pretty common.
You want a brush that’s not too big in which you’re going to have huge streaks of glue,
but not too small where you’re going to be gluing forever, and this size here is somewhat appropriate.
So what’s key when you’re casing in is you want to minimize how much the book is going to move
or how much the text block is going to move during the whole process, so you want it keep it straight,
once you set how you want the case to fit, you want it to not move at all.
So, I’m going to put some pressure here the whole time and then when I flip it
you’ll see I’ll be giving it some pressure all around as well.
I’m going to glue from the bottom of the shoulder out, so you see there’s about a two-millimeter, no, less than that,
probably about a one-millimeter space where I’m not gluing, actually I won’t be gluing after I put the textile lining down.
So I just put that down, and then here I’ll leave a little bit at the spine.
Now, I’m moving pretty slowly, and you’ll see that that’s not going to turn out too well
because this paper is going to curl up very much and it’s going to get somewhat hard to work with;
anytime you introduce moisture to paper or to cloth, or even to board or anything, anything made up of wood or rag fibers,
or textile or anything, is going to accept the moisture and deform a little bit, expand basically.
And you’ll see how this is already curling up, that’s the moisture that’s expanding the paper.
So, now I’m going to take out the newsprint, and I want everything to stay as it is when I put this cover down.
So, I’m putting a significant amount of pressure on the spine when I lift this up.
I’m pushing down right now, pushing this into the shoulder and what I want to do is let that drop, and that’s that.
I want to work quickly so I can do the other side, and I will.
Again, I’m being very careful to keep everything lined up how I liked it, how I originally did,
and actually this looks pretty well the way it came back down, at first sight at least.
So, some pressure there and I’m going to do the same thing.
As you might guess, I’m going to put this into the press after,
and I’m going to put this in the press for about five minutes to really make sure that the glue has spread out evenly,
and the bond is pretty good.
So, I’m going to put this into the press, but to protect the text block from any deformations or anything
I’m going to put some Reemay and some wax paper. I guess I typically use 20-point card stock as guards more typically
but the goal is just to prevent any offset of material penetrating your other pages, so this should work here,
but like I said you can use other materials such as card stock.
OK, so I need these wooden boards again and I’m just going to wrap this in some newsprint
to keep it somewhat clean, and I’m going to put it in the press.
So I’m going to put this into the press, and again the goal is that the glue adheres evenly across everything.
You don’t really need to work it too hard, and what I’m doing now is just centering it under the screw and the platen,
and that looks pretty good.
And I’m pressing down somewhat hard but it’s certainly not as hard as it can go
because if you press down too hard, especially when you’re doing it with a new case,
you have the chance to tear your cloth at the top of your shoulder where your spine is.
So, I’m going to put this in for a few minutes actually, probably about two,
just to make sure that the glue is going to spread out pretty evenly.
And after I take it out, I’m just going to re-emphasize the groove of the shoulder with my bone folder
and set it aside for another day, and then after the end of the day it’s ready to go back into circulation.
I don’t know if you hear it but there’s a little kind of squeak or crinkle of the glue
as you lift off the platen and put it down,
I sometimes I like to give varying amounts of pressure going up and down
just to try and work those out a little bit, but that’s a personal thing.
So, I took this out of the press, and you want this to rest, as is, under a light weight for about 24 hours,
and then after that it should be good to go.
You do want to, though, set the joint as with any book you recase, or any book that you make that you case in.
And the way you do that, what you should do again after it rests for 24 hours,
is pull down a bit, we’re going to put some pressure at the spine and on the book,
and just basically push down the board, I’m pushing pressure this way in the board,
this way so that it’s kind of getting pushed into the shoulder, and that’s called: setting the joint.
And you want to do that on both sides, and before we go, let me just show you how it turned out.
So I set the joints there, and what you have is a brand new book,
or rather the same book given a brand new life for your circulating collection.
FINAL CREDITS