How to properly glue a hardcover and softcover book if it is torn

Internet and gadgets have failed to supplant paper books. Most homes have favorite old and new tomes and children's books, which deteriorate over time, tear, lose pages and covers. It is not difficult to restore a decent look to your favorite publications, you need to be patient and carry out the necessary restoration work. Consider how to glue and repair a book if it is torn and needs repair.

Preparing for restoration

Restoring books requires skills and certain knowledge that will help not to completely spoil the thing, to extend the life of your favorite edition. Masters advise, in the absence of experience, to practice on worthless brochures, to gain dexterity and develop skills.

Before work, you need to prepare materials and tools for restoration:

1. You will need a knife with a sharp, stiff, short blade that won't bend when pressed. It is not recommended to use scissors to cut the pages - the cut will not work evenly and smoothly. For a large amount of work, you can purchase a special binding knife.
2. Scissors.
3. Natural glue - based on flour, PVA.
4. Metal ruler, triangle.
5. Press for pressing and securing glued items or several heavy books.
6. Binding tape or gauze, paper to bind torn pages.

Before beginning the restoration, you should assess the materials needed to restore the integrity of the book. It is necessary to prepare a free space on the table where the work will take place, then the glued folio will lie under the press until it dries completely.

Work instructions

When you start restoring a book, you should remember a few rules that will make your job easier:

1. Immediately remove excess glue with a (slightly damp) gauze pad.
2. We prepare several sheets of paper with which we will separate the parts of the volume to be glued - pages, endpapers, and also a narrow sheet of waxed paper to separate the spine. Otherwise, the book will stick tightly together.
3. We maintain the hardening time of the glue until the next work step.

A reliable press (in the absence - bricks or heavy books) will not allow it to deform, swell.

How to paste a torn page

The paper of the pages is the thinnest, wears off at the edges, often tears, especially in children's books. It is not difficult to restore the integrity of the pages. You will need:

• glue;
• paper;
• load for fixing.

On the table you need to lay out the torn pages - smooth, combine the edges, fill in the missing areas with patches. The edges are smeared with glue (PVA, flour), carefully combined to form a whole sheet. Excess glue is removed with a gauze pad slightly moistened with water.

Thin paper (cigarette, capacitor) is applied on top, without smearing it with glue.In order for the sheets to adhere better and not deform during drying, thick paper is placed between them, the book is placed under the load. After a few hours the seal is removed, the book is left to dry for at least 24 hours. If the break extends outside the text, you can use mica paper, which is more durable, but not transparent, for gluing.

Important: The adhesive tape for sticking the pages can only be used on copies of books that are not intended for long-term use.

The sheet under the tape gradually yellows, the text fades. The adhesive tape is suitable for restoring baby books that quickly become useless.

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Clean and dry the book

Books are best dusted with a vacuum cleaner, damp rags spoil the binding, cover, pages. To remove contamination, use:

1. Ink marks are cleaned with a cotton swab soaked in hydrogen peroxide.
2. Pencil marks are removed with an eraser.
3. Fresh grease stains are covered with chalk, tooth powder. Cover the top with a sheet of paper and iron it with a hot iron.
4. Traces of old grease are washed off with refined gasoline.
5. Paper rust can be wiped off with a cotton swab dipped in citric acid.
6. Moths and other parasites are destroyed by placing the book in the freezer for several days. You can use chemicals for pests. After insecticide treatment, the volume is kept in a sealed bag for several hours.

If the book gets wet, first remove the water with dry cloths. Then place paper towels between the pages, press to remove moisture. The last step is to iron the pages with a hot iron (through the paper).To avoid any deformation, the volume is placed in a press for one day. You should try to dry the book quickly so that the paper does not swell and turn yellow, the text does not fade.

Reference: ideal conditions for storing books: humidity - 50-60%, temperature - 18-22°, no direct sunlight, cupboard sealed against dust.

Collage of thick and hardcover editions

The most common problem with hardcover books is lamination of the corners and pages of the binding. If your favorite book just has a permanent crease at the corners of the cover, you can saturate them with superglue. This will give them stiffness and hold the corner together.

If the flyleaf is tight and the page block is crumbling, you need a simple reinforcement:

1. The volume is placed vertically, the opening between the spine and the pages is widened.
2. In the resulting hole, you need to inject glue to coat the edge of the page block. To do this, use a knitting needle or a wooden stick. The needle is dipped in glue, scrolls through the hole. Then the book is turned over, the actions are repeated on the other side.
3. A narrow strip of thick polyethylene or waxed paper is inserted between the spine and the block of the book. The strip is moved so that it does not stick and the book opens normally in the future.
4. Press down on the crease of the endpapers (at the beginning and at the end of the volume) so that the glue is evenly distributed.

Clamp the book in a press or weight while the glue dries.

If the binding and cover are separated from the pages, we carry out the following work:

1. Carefully separate the cover from the page block.
2. We free the place of gluing from protruding threads and glue residues, align.
3. We prepare the material for fixing the block - a folded thick gauze or a special binding tape (from the crafts department). The low cost of purchasing a cassette tape will make it easy to restore your favorite book.
4. We grease one side of the prepared material with glue and stick it firmly to the edge of the page block and place it on the 1-centimeter block.
5. You need to wait for the glue to harden and dry - it will take several hours. You should not continue working if the glue is not frozen, it gets your hands dirty.
6. The next step is to attach the text block to the book cover. When using special binding tape, 2 free ends remain; when using improvised means (gauze), you will need to glue another piece of fabric.
7. We glue one strip to the inside of the spine, the second to the cover. Press firmly and let dry.
8. Make a new cover page. For its manufacture, give preference to thick, but not hard paper (standard paper for a printer).The size of the sheet folded in half is equal to the size of the pages.
9. Glue one half and a narrow strip of the second part (3-5 millimeters) with glue. We attach the sheet to the sewn side of the cover and fix it to the body of the volume with a narrow band. Carefully remove any excess glue that has come out.

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After that, we put the glued volume under the press in order to firmly fix all the parts and give the book an attractive appearance - flatness and symmetry.

How to work with the paperback

For baby books, the covers usually deteriorate first - corners are bent and cut, paper on the spine is wiped off, paper clips fly off.Consider the sequence of work on the restoration of children's books:

1. The frayed cover is separated from the book by folding the paper clips. Then you need to think about how to replace the lost areas - use thick white or colored paper of the appropriate color.
2. A patch is made on the back of the book, gluing it inside with PVA glue.
3. Cover cuts should be sealed back-to-back, like pages.
4. If the blanket is very frayed, you can completely replace it with thick paper, decorate with the remaining sections of the blanket.
5. Rusty traces of paperclips are cut or brightened with citric acid.
6. If the book is thick and the paper clips tear the paper, it is better to sew it so that the sheets do not fly off. To do this, use an awl and a thick white thread. The sheets are collected in order, the edge is leveled, the perforations are made with an awl, they are sewn with a long thick needle along the entire length of the spine (not just where the clips were). The knots are carefully tied. The seam is easy to hide by gluing a strip of decorative paper along the spine.
7. If there is no need for firmware, they just fix the pages with new clips.

With your imagination and ingenuity, you can make your book cover look more interesting than it originally was. Torn paperback (travel) format books are fixed with glue and clamped with a press until dry. To keep the cover tighter, you can connect it to the page block with a cover page. To do this, cut out a sheet of thick paper, fold it in half. The size of the folded sheet should match the size of the book.One part is attached to the page block with a narrow strip (3-5 millimeters), the other is tightly glued to the wrong side of the cover.

Restoration of old books

It is worth starting the restoration of old, collapsed books, having mastered the basic operations. It is recommended to first estimate the size of the work, prepare materials for replacing the cover, restore the text on damaged pages (for example, on a printer or copier).

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If the book is valuable, it is best to take it to a restoration workshop.

Work sequence:

1. Evaluate text security, presence of all pages. Restore the missing sheets, glue the torn pages according to the method recommended above. If some pages are missing, you can find the text on the Internet, print it on a printer and paste it into the volume.
2. Gather all the pages in order, making sure there are no spaces in the text and the exact alternation of the sheets. Bind the page block using tape or gauze.
3. Restore coverage.
4. Assemble the volume, use tape and flyleaves to secure the cover to the text block.

If the cover is frayed and does not protect the pages, looks unsightly, we prepare a new one. The first is to use an appropriately sized cover from an unnecessary book. For decoration, areas of the old are used, scanned and printed on a color printer or arbitrarily make an author's version.

You can make the cover yourself:

1. Cut 2 rectangles out of hard, thick cardboard to fit the cover.
2. They are pasted on thick paper, for example, printer paper (A1-A3 format, depending on the format).Lay the cardboard in the center of the sheet, cut the corners until you almost reach the cardboard blank. Fold over and secure with glue.
3. Dry under pressure for 3 to 5 hours.
4. For the manufacture of the spine, a plastic material is chosen - leather, thick fabric (such as denim), paper. The spine is attached to the dried cover elements immediately or after picking up the book. They are brought to the surface of the blanket by 0.7-1 centimeters.

You can decorate your homemade cover with pieces of the original or the scanned copy. Instead of paper to cover the cardboard, you can use fabric, decorative film. It all depends on the imagination, the type of book to save and the materials at hand.

Additional tips and tricks

Some advice for those who have started the restoration:

1. It is better to give valuable old books, rare editions to a restoration workshop. Craftsmen will be able to restore the original appearance of the rarity, extend the life, preserve the price and artistic value of the publication.
2. Don't use tape for restoration - packing tape will soon peel off, sealing will ruin the text.
3. Stationery glue is not suitable for repairing books - glued pages break and become brittle. The glue gradually exfoliates and crumbles along with the leaves.
4. For sewing a book, it is better to take not cotton thread, but threads for knitting, waxed linen or sewing.

It is often easier not to glue and repair the book, but to use metal or plastic bindings and rings to hold the pages together. This is how you can restore recipe books and useful tips.

Old books can be extended by keeping editions for children and grandchildren.Good books are an enjoyable way to spend your free time, many pass down valuable books from generation to generation. The books recall old friends who donated the volume, important life events. The ability to restore older editions and children's books is useful for anyone who loves to read and has a home library.