Basically if you have ever held a backstrip-less late 19th century book in your hands you know that these products of the industrial revolution had newsprint for hollowbacks and strips of ticking fabric for headbands.
Of course you can buy ready made headband yardage, but that seems like a waste of money. I just keep an eye peeled for finely striped cotton fabric and stow it in my bottom drawer. A half yard will last for decades.
Generally I cut a 2″ x 3″ swatch, then soak it in laundry starch, wheat starch, methyl cellulose, something that will make it nice and firm when it dries. Then fold it half over a piece of cotton string. squeeze out the excess moisture and let it dry, on a piece of wax paper or plastic. When dry, peel it up and use it to replace missing old ones. And btw don’t forget to dye it with tea or coffee to give it that century old dirty color.
I spent yesterday propping up my title of ‘Eraser Queen of North America’. I went to pick up a lovely 60lb box of specialty erasers and lo and behold the company makes TWO more erasers – so of COURSE I have to have them too . . . nothing exceeds like excess.
As a rule general surface cleaning of overall discoloration and dirt makes a substantial improvement in appearance of a book. After removing specific marks like writing and smudges, cleaning an entire surface can be off-putting, as too much work for not enough return.
I never had much use for the lowly art gum eraser until now. There are many different types of erasing powders out there, but one of the best and cheapest ones, is simply ground up gum eraser. In 1984 Cathleen A. Baker wrote a bit on grating your own art gum erasers using a vegetable grater, instead of buying it from specialty vendors, you can control the grain size and you needn’t ever worry about running out.
The issue with grinding your own document cleaning powder is to find a balance in the size of the grains: too small and it will become embedded in the paper grain, too large and it doesn’t do the job properly. From the bookseller’s point of view, laziness is all – buying the product in a container or more likely in a cotton bag, is usually the first choice. But not having to buy it at all?
I have begun keeping an art gum eraser and a mini food grater in a dish on my desk . . . .this eliminates the entire chore of bulk grinding, as well as cleaning up AFTER the bulk grinding.
Pretend there is a spiffy video here showing me grating an art gum eraser with a mini-grater and then cleaning a vintage map. The first time I shot it, one of the kittens kept trying to come in the room, the second time, there was a car outside the bindery, the third time it was out of focus and the fourth time I was babbling so much, I couldn’t edit it properly. So the hell with it, you get the idea.
Here you go kiddies, the most requested video. How to reattach a single loose cover. Please note this cover is not completely detached, the hinge has merely come away from the text block and the front board is still part of the complete cover.
Obviously this repair would be temporary for any book where a restoration or recasing is worth doing. But it is certainly a good reversible repair to make a book salable and keep further damage to the cover and spine from occurring.
At a book fair recently, a fella showed me his first edition of Huck Finn where the cover had been reattached using a completely unacceptable method. Basically they just piled on the adhesive – to the point where the hollowback was sealed tightly to the spine – to reverse such an abomination involves a full restoration, and has made the book worse rather than better. So stick to things that can be undone whenever you can.
My latest video has pissed someone off. He doesn’t approve of my method and requests I take it down and basically i told him to bite me. For anyone who hasn’t figured this out, my methods are intend for inexpensive books that are not WORTH sending out to be professionally worked on. If you don’t like the methods don’t use them. I have seen much worse damage done to books of great value, than clumsily reattaching a cover on a $30 book.
busy busy busy, seems the fewer job prospects I have the busier I seem to be – . . . . Oreo’s eye is better – after 2 vets and 3 medications, the sight won’t come back but it looks better and she’s no longer in pain. The diabetic cat that I was cat minding for only a week is STILL here 2 weeks later – and her RX has been upped to 3 shots a day. Summer is breathing its last gasps and I really have to do something about getting the hot water turned back on. Alas after 4 temp agencies and umpteen resumes I have only one nibble – if i get it i will tell you what it is – you simply WON’T believe me otherwise.
Anyhow here is the 1st of the next batch of videos I was planning. Some one asked me to carry book weights at sicpress.com I just can’t rationalize shipping lead anythings.
Making some simple book weights with lead shot or with lentils
Did i miss another day ? damn that’s happening quite a lot these days, the night and days are running together and I am having trouble remember which DAY it actually is. and no, i still don’t have a ’straight’ job though not for lack of looking and I still don’t have hot water and I still don’t have the 1600 dollars the Vermont Dealer owes me for services rendered.
A LOT of dealers don’t use leather dressing for several reasons, 1. they handle very few leather books, 2. they don’t work on the leather books they have, or 3. they are worried about damaging the book further. Fair enough.
This 1 minute video shows a quick way to WRAP the text block to keep it safe while you do various and sundry things to the outside of the book.
For those who can’t play the video, you are basically wrapping a 3 sided present.
1. take a piece of thick paper 2½ x 3 times taller than the book.slide the paper into the rear gutter, between the rear cover and the text block
2. open the front cover
3. fold the top and bottom of the paper over text block, and tape them down.
4. fold down the paper surrounding the fore-edge, JUST like the corner of a package. secure that.
now you have a tight safe surface surrounding the fore-edges and free endpapers.
making accomodations • This subject popped it’s head up on the Bibliophile group and I have been trying to squeeze a commentary on it. But to tell you the truth it’s basically just a combination of common sense and professional courtesy. Shipping on Approval was once more common and still exists in small pockets of the trade. Usually high end or speciality items and especially items going into personal or public collections .
When dealing with familiar vendors, past clients, instititutions or on rare ocassions someone with impecable references from one of the above, why wouldn’t you want to accomodate? If the book is of a considerable sum it is far easier to make sure it’s acceptable than to process a large transaction and then return, especially from an institition – the whole thing could take 8 months. High end vendors prefer the product in hand to present it to their own client for approval, forming a lovely profitable chain – making everyone happy.
Just a few common sense precautions to protect yourself from loss or delay: • Always get a written request for the book. • Include an invoice stamped ‘on approval’. • Insure the item yourself. • Don’t be cheap! Fedex, Overnight, and DHL etc . . . exist for a reason. • Include the paperwork for return shipping. • Always get signature confirmation. • Check up on the item after a reasonable time.
Whether you are removing self-adhesive stickers, pre-gummed bookplates or other book fixes, even using my book deodorizer product, a MAJOR factor in a successful fix is time and patience. I didn’t video this bookplate removal today, because it was 20 minutes of very boring, very minute work with a Q-tip and naphtha. If you scroll back far enough in the Bullpen, you will find many more mentions of naphtha (lighter fluid) and its wonderful property of dissolving acrylic sticker adhesive then evaporating harmlessly. Obviously some incredible idiot felt that his signature was nicer to look at than President Ford’s, so he slapped a bookplate over it. The odds were that the plate was gummed (water soluble) or acrylic adhesive (heat or chemical release) – and the signature was indelible Sharpie marker and the paper was coated – so 20 minutes of patience successfully restored Jerry’s hand. Heat or water may have created a ripple in the paper. So, like with all fixes you need to analyze the situation and test your fixes on similar papers and sacrificial books. Which is a step many people skip. Yesterday, I got a panicked phone call from a high end seller who was worried that the book deodorizer hadn’t worked on the text blocks yet. He had only used it for 4 days – and the product is a passive 14+ days fix. Impatience gets people in a lot of tight spots and makes for sloppy results.
Group repairs together by difficulty. Do small repairs in batches, and big repairs alone.
Be PATIENT – set repair projects aside for quiet time, late night or early morning, weekends, holidays, times when nothing else is demanding your attention.
Clear the work area of everything else.
Assemble your tools, even ones you may not need.
Don’t use household tools, have TWO sets, and keep your repair tools in a special box, drawer or tool box.
Turn on music – not talk. Personally I yell at talk radio, so it’s not calming.
Don’t have a cup at hand. You’d be surprised at this one, but trust me.
If you have pets, secure your work area when you walk away. Close liquids, cover papers.
Let things dry at their own pace, which means overnight if need be.
When you are finished, clean your tools and put them away.
I dunno what kind of day you’all are having but here’s wishing you and yours are having happy happy joy joy. Personally, I have sewage backing up into my basement, the city says it isn’t their fault (when I finally got a hold of them, see, my city shuts up shop at 12 noon on Fridays like Brigadoon) and my mother things the neighbors are sneaking in and using our plumbing . . . or maybe it was space aliens, I forget.
calendar • 1818 - the first American performance of Handel’s oratorio Messiah was performed in Boston. 1822 - Victorian poet Matthew Arnold is born (d 1888) 1880 – Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist, children’s book writer and creator of Raggedy Ann (d. 1939) 1881 -Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958) 1902 - Langston Hughes is born – the first African-American earn a living as a poet. (d 1967) 1903 -Theodore Dreiser resigns from his job on the railroad. 1910 -Fritz Leiber, American writer (d. 1992) 1912 – D. H. Lawrence writes a friend, “My motto is ‘Art for my sake.’” 1929 -Mary Higgins (Clark) is born 1930 -F Garcia Lorca’s “La Zapatera Prodigiosa,“ premieres in Madrid 1945 - Nicholas Meyer, American author 1946 -Eric Van Lustbader is born 1955 -Aldous Huxley takes LSD for the first time.
1851 -On Christmas Eve 1851, the Library of Congress burnt down entirely. More than 35,000 volumes – out of 55,000 – went up in smoke, including two thirds of Thomas Jefferson’s invaluable library. It was reconstructed, but nearly 900 volumes (out of 6487 books) are still missing. The fire was caused by faulty chimney flues. Librarian Meehan wrote to Senator Pearce of Maryland, Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library: “It is my melancholy duty to inform you that a fire originated in the principal room of the Library of Congress this morning, about half past seven o’clock, and that nearly everything in the room was destroyed before the flames were subdued.” This was the second fire to have devastated the library.
cool trick • If you want to leave an icon on your screen without a name under it, just right click to rename, hold down ALT and type 0160 which inserts an invisible character.
Like most booksellers I always have a problem finding JUST the right size box for each occasion. Either they are too big or too small – unless I order them to my own specs – but I am too cheap to do that – but I am NOT so cheap I wouldn’t use a box to ship a book. Which by the way one should always do. Shipping a book without a box is extremely tacky.
Anyway – I had a small need for a small box and the smallest things I had on hand are the relatively new USPS Priority ’shoeboxes’. Maybe this is old news to some people but I was delighted to find that the box is already scored to cut in half – creating at least one 4″x5″x8″ box. Which fit my particular need perfectly. I am alarmed to find that there ARE people of foresight working for the USPS and why aren’t they in departments that will do us the MOST good?
How sad is my life, when THIS is the most exciting thing that happened to me all day?
I got an email this morning asking me if I had a chapter in my book on book repair on removing correcting fluid. Which surprisingly I do not. In 28 years of cleaning up after other people’s sins I had not had this problem. So I got out my mad scientists smelly chemical set and got to ’sperimentin’.
I stopped at Staples and picked up all the correcting fluids they had which wasn’t many but I figured they were the most annoying formulations: White Out® Quick Dry, White Out® Extra Coverage, White Out® Water Based, and Liquid Paper®. In case you were wondering no – they don’t make liquid paper thinner anymore, I checked.
The best results came from odorless Mineral Spirits (white spirits) and Naptha and Turpentine. They all successfully liquefied the correction fluid which would then have to be removed quickly. Heptane even made Liquid Paper congeal and gave the cleanest result. White Out Water Based® could NOT be re-liquefied with anything short of Paint Stripper. All of these solvents evaporate as fast as you use them, so you need to work quickly in small areas, removing the correcting fluid with a clean paper towel or cotton ball as fast as you dissolve it.
Mineral Spirits, Naptha and Turpentine are all found in the Paint Section of your hardware store. Mineral Spirits and Naptha and Heptane all work well to remove stickers cleanly and quickly. Heptane can most easily be found at art supply stores Bestine® Rubber Cement thinner and solvent.
Basically if you have ever held a backstrip-less late 19th century book in your hands you know that these products of the industrial revolution had newsprint for hollowbacks and strips of ticking fabric for headbands.
