Book with wooden boards

Robert Pearce <robert.pearce [at] nottingham__ac__uk> writes

>I have recently been working on a 15th Century English binding. The
>book has Beech(?) boards that are approximately 9mm thick and one of
>the boards is broken along the grain. Although this must have
>happened quite a while ago, the boards fit together quite nicely
>with good sharp clean joins. ...

What I do when this has happened is to drill holes in the broken
edges to receive wooden dowels which are glued into one edge, using
high grade hide glue, then the other ends of the dowels are glued,
along with the broken edges of the boards and the package is clamped
together, and left overnight.

On one side of the boards (generally the inside) I insert two or
three (wooden) butterfly repairs, again, with hide glue.

If the book is on the large side I'll also line it around with a
strong handmade paper, using a mixture of hide glue and cooked wheat
starch paste. I've e-mailed some JPEGs to Robert.

Jack
Thompson Conservation Lab
503-735-3942


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:68
                   Distributed: Monday, May 18, 2009
                       Message Id: cdl-22-68-005
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