BibliophileBullpen

Dear Bibliobull:

I’m normally a book collector, but recently succumbed to a temptation and purchased the first comic appearance of Donald Duck. This is a huge book for a comic (9 1/2 X 12 3/4), and has a fair amount of surface grime, made more obvious by a prior attempt by a prior owner to remove a pencil signature. The cover is on pulp-ish, non-glossy paper. What would you use for gentle surface cleaning? A document cleaning pad?

Duck and Cover

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Dear Ducky:

Since it has an ink printed surface you are correct in avoiding anything abrasive. Your choices are:
Absorene which is like a clean grease free silly putty, which also crumbles and allows you to roll the bits around collecting up surface dirt.

Document cleaning pads which will scatted tiny eraser granules over the surface for you to gently rub in.

Or ground up erasers of varying kinds: art gum or white vinyl. If you want to experiment you can use a cheese or nutmeg grater (avoid pink rubber erasers will just dry out when ground up.)

All of these perform the same function ADHESION, getting the dirt to adhere to the granule surface so you can blow it off; Absorene is just the ’stickiest’. You can repeat this as often as you like as long as you don’t apply too much pressure to the grains and actually ’scrub’ against the inks.

Dear Bibliobull:

I recently purchased a book off the net (one supposedly in “fine” condition . . . ha), and when it arrived, I discovered it had 3 splats of dried blood on the fore-edge. It’s gross, but I want to keep the book. Any suggestions?

Bloody Shame

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Dear Shame:

Go to the hardware store and buy a sanding sponge, these are found near the sandpaper, and come in various sizes and grits. They are mostly used for sanding spackle and dry wall. With this you can ‘erase’ the surface of the fore-edge, especially good for general fore-edge grime. This won’t work on faux deckle of course.

Any bleaching agent will drain the red out and turn it brown or perhaps yellow. If the drops are small enough, perhaps hydogen peroxide on a q-tip? Since you can’t wash it, the proteins will never completely go away so the best you can do is make them less noticeable.

This is a take on something i found in another blog, but I cannot for the life of me remember where. The original had used the wobbly stackable paper sorters. I had this much more stable one to work with: the sides and tops are medium density fiberboard, the back is a very thin fiberboard and the shelves are just corrugated cardboard.

I took all the crap out of the paper sorter and loosened the back a bit.

I used the 1/2″ drill bit as it is larger that most of the cable ends I need to insert.
I also used a serrated knife to enlarge the holes where needed.

Pull the cabling through to the front and connect all the peripherals.

The rear has all the cables protruding as well as the router’s antennae.
which i could also put on top if i need the top slot for something else.

Final result.