Repairing the "Book of the Astronomican"

Hello gents & gentiles,

Today I present to you my rather hamfisted (but ultimately successful) step-by-step process of repairing an old softcover book. The tome in question is one that I've coveted for many many years, but my wallet had remained steadfast in not yielding its bounty for the ridiculous amount of coin that is generally asked for it. So I waited......and waited.....and waited some more, until I finally got one! All for the princely sum of $15!!! But, it needed some TLC & I was up for the challenge!

Read on! If you want to know more.....

Looked "OK" from the outside.

 

But from the side....it wasn't :(

So, out come the pages....carefully.

 

Pry the front & rear book covers apart.

Aided with a bit of gentle persuasion :)

With glue this old & brittle it doesn't take too much to remove the pages.

Old glue still stuck to the bulk of the pages.

But pulls away pretty easily.

Then your left with the cover sheet

Removed the traces of old glue.

Pulling one page away from the "glue slab" at a time....carefully.

More of the same fun.

Until I ended up with all of the pages unattached from each other.

I then removed the remaining glue from the front and back pages where it meets the covers near the spine.  

I roughened up the spine of the cover, to provide a better purchase for the glue.

Roughening process complete.

Clamped to the bench after stuffing about lining up the pages.

I used baking paper under & over the page block....too make sure the glue only stuck to the pages and nothing else.

Once this was clamped I applied about four or five thin coats of Latex glue to the spine. Waiting for each coat to dry fully before applying the next. Once that was done I tested the page block to see if the repair was successful, before I proceeded with the rest of the process.

Then I applied Latex glue to the cover spine & installed the page block. Lined it up & put a couple of sheets of baking paper between the front & back cover to ensure the glue that inevitably squeezes out from the spine doesn't stick the covers & pages together.

The two sheets of baking paper installed up to where you don't want
the glue to adhere.

Clamped to the bench for a few days to make sure the glue had fully cured.

All done, pages not falling out....awesome!

The spine & front /rear sections reattached correctly.

Looks good to me :)

This rock'n dude gave it his seal of approval too :)

Final notes:

I used Latex glue, as PVA glue dries quite hard/brittle. Where as the former is still flexible once fully cured. I think the hardest part of the whole process was getting the page block lined up before clamping. I'm a bit of a stingy bastard, so instead of buying or making a proper page block clamp I improvised. It did the job! But I'm sure if I had had the correct clamping tool it would have made the process a lot easier.

This copy of the Astronomican wasn't even glued along the narrow section (front & back) near the spine. Hence, why it had started to fall apart. Anyway, I'm a happy chappy now, coz I've got the book I've wanted for ages.... in good condition :)

Now, I can almost hear through the web, you guys asking, "How the hell did you manage to get hold of a copy of the Book of the Astronomican for $15!!!??". Well, I'll tell you, as it stands, I now have all of the old RT/WFB tomes that I've ever wanted. So I'm happy to pass on my little secret to collecting old GW tomes, which to tell you the truth probably isn't much of a secret anyway! But here goes......have a look on AbeBooks I've collected over half of the books from their listed booksellers over the years. And I've gotten them all quite cheaply, as they either don't know the value of what they have and/or they've incorrectly listed them with spelling or ISBN errors. Their lack of knowledge about their own stock is my gain.....and now it can be yours too :)


Anyway, all the best, catch you later :)