i just came across a book I’ve had for years, The Locomotives Of The Rio Grande the cover heavy paper was loose when I bought and i always meant to see if I could repair it.
I’m thinking now would be a good time, I’m thinking maybe a thin coat of rubber cement or better yet maybe contact cement , along the binding" anyone done this before? Is this a good idea or no"
Ask your local librarian what they do to repair books
Sometimes a complete re-binding is possible which might be in order for a fine book that cannot be replaced.
I worked in an office years ago and made scratchpads using scratchpaper cut to size, with a sheet of cardstock, and tightly clamped, “painted” on one edge with a special liquid rubbery product we bought from a library or office supply outfit, that in essence made the equivalent of a pad of paper, where each sheet could be torn off. But a book I suspect would want something more durable.
Dave Nelson
I used to work at a shop that bound books. All the pages were held square and tight by a clamping mechanism. A mechanized roller would then apply melted hot glue to the edge of the clamped pages and the cover was applied and pressed into place.
If you look at the edge of some hard or soft bound books, you can sometimes see a bit of this hot glue that has been squeezed to the outer edge.
Mark.
Hot glue is better than rubber cement and most other contact cements for this purpose, in large part because normal temperature ranges won’t cause it to loosen or slide. The bookbining glue was somewhat different than your standard hot glue gun glue, but it should work for this purpose with some care to get it in the right places and not glue the pages together, etc.
You might google book re-binding for some more ideas. Depends of course on whether you want to just replace one page or re-do the binding of the cover.
One example:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Repair-an-Old-Classic-Book-rebinding/
Check for a You-Tube video on book/binding repair. How to videos have saved me a fortune over the years.
Thanks for all the great ideas guys.
Appreciate it
We got a book bindry shop here. Mostly we do our own work, (after all, we have over 100,000 volumes in our library–some dating back to the 1300s) but we have in the past done work for others. I do not know if Br. Jacob would look at your book, though I tend to doubt it since our maintenance man has retired, he has taken over a lot of the building maintenance. Time he may not have.
You can clamp the book firmly, use a hack saw to cut vertical notches in the back of the book. Put strings in these notches, and then use a binders paste to finish the job and then attach a cover.
ROAR
Got my hot glue gun out and it seemed to work just fine.