Bookbinding and The Care of Books
Douglas Cockerell with Drawings by Noel Rooke and other
Illustrations New York 1902
Bookbinding Chapter IV Part 4
MENDING
as possible must be found. For this purpose it is the custom of bookbinders
to collect quantities of old paper. If a piece of the same tone cannot be
found, paper of similar texture and substance may be strained to match.
Supposing a corner to be missing, and a piece of paper to have been found
that matches it, the torn page is laid over the new paper in such a way that
the wire marks on both papers correspond. Then the point of a folder
should be drawn along the edge of the torn sheet, leaving an indented line on
the new paper. The new paper should then be cut off about an eighth of an
inch beyond the indented line, and the edge carefully pared up to the line.
The edge of the old paper must be similarly pared, so that the two edges
when laid together will not exceed the thickness of the rest of the page. It is
well to leave a little greater overlap at the edges of the page. Both cut edges
must then be well pasted with white paste and rubbed down between
blotting-paper. To ensure a perfectly clean joint the pasted edge should not
be touched with the hand, and pasting-paper, brushes, and paste must be
perfectly clean.
In the case of a tear across the page, in there are any overlapping edges, they
may merely be pasted together and the end of the tear at the edge of the
paper strengthened by a small piece of pared paper. If the tear crosses print,
and there are no overlapping edges, either tiny pieces of pared paper may be
cut and laid across the tear between the lines of print, or else a piece of the
thinnest Japanese paper, which is nearly transparent, may be pasted right
along the tear over the print; in either case the mend should be strengthened
at the edge of the page by an additional thickness of paper. In cases where
the backs of the sections have been much damaged, it will be necessary to
paper. The edges of any mend may, with great care, be scraped with a sharp knife having a slight
burr on the under side, and then rubbed lightly with a piece of worn fine sand-paper, or a
fragment of cuttle-fish bone. Care must be taken not to pare away too much, and especially not
to pare away too much, and especially not to weaken the mend at the edges of the sheet. As a
general rule, the new mending paper should go on the back of a sheet.
Sometimes it is thought necessary to fill up worm-holes in the paper. This may be done by
boiling down some paper in size until it is of a pulpy consistency, and a little of this filled into
the wormholes will re-make the paper in those places. It is a very tedious operation, and seldom
worth doing.
mending paper, excepting that a little greater
overlap must be left. It is well to put a stitch of
silk at each end of a vellum patch, as you cannot
depend on paste alone holding vellum securely.
The overlapping edges must be well roughed up
with a knife to make sure that the paste will stick.
A cut in a vellum page is best mended with fine
silk with a lacing stitch (see fig. 18).
Mending is most easily done on a sheet of
plate-glass, of which the edges and corners have
been rubbed down.
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