I will try to come up with an example of the double creased kind.
There is no sound, migraine remember? and now that I have figured out how to put on titles, you may see more subtitling.

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.

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.

with both (9:24):

watch with lentils only (3:24)

watch with lead shot only (5:40)

Yesterday the leather dressing showed up and I had to drop everything and bottle it. This morning I made the HOW TO video, demonstrating its proper application.

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.

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.

The only thing that made me feel better was cranking out 2 more videos . . . seems to be relaxing.

The first one is on how to make a strop . . . that’s a leather dohicky that takes the burrs off your knife edge and makes it razor sharp. This is an item one makes rather than buys.

VIDEO: How to make a Strop • Using very few materials, you can construct your own strop to keep your knives sharp.

and the other is me replacing one ribbon on a Moleskine Journal with four. This method is completely transmutable to replacing ribbons on any book, I was just catering to the Moleskine junkies to get some hits over on www.sicpress.com which could use them.

VIDEO: How to replace ribbons on a Moleskine • or any other book, bible or journal.

This is a demonstration of Absorene Book and Paper Cleaner – it’s somewhere between Playdough and Sillyputty. You mush it with your fingers until it’s soft then rub it gently on the document, the dirty parts flake off then you brush them away.

• Here’s another example of the Document Cleaning Pad Demonstration

• and another shot of the Dusting Brush in action, I was kinda shocked to find that this book has a gilt top edge – I had just shoved it on a shelf after I used it as a binding exercise 15 years ago.

• and here’s an application of Triple Crown Leather Dressing, its mostly neats foot oil, beeswax and microwax, but it does a swell job on even my bad binding.

• scratch covering with Meltonian Shoe Cream – I am still casting around for the MSD sheet on this item. But so far it is not like ‘shoe polish’ at all, it’s creamy like womens makeup. I have had requests for this it and recommendations, so SOMEONE out there isn’t worried about it. And I think for moderately priced books its quite serviceable.

• and Lexol-pH Leather Cleaner – a nice glycerin Leather ‘soap’ very gentle at lifting dirt out of embossed leather – I think I like this best of all my new toys.

please stay tuned to Bullpen TV for more repair videos.

[thanks for the heads up from Ron @ V-Karma_Books]