I've been watching a lot of DIY bookbinding videos here lately, in part because I am interested in the process, in part to stir my Muse into helping me work on my WIP. I have considered trying to print and bind copies of my books myself for special giveaways and such in the future, as well as creating blank books to give away as gifts to family and friends.
I have been especially interested in how it is done so that I might possibly repair some of the antique books I have myself rather than paying a lot of money to have it done. Two books in particular come to mind from a purchase I made last year. If you follow me on Facebook, you might remember I bought some books from an elderly lady who was downsizing for a move. Among them was a 140- to 150-year-old copy of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, as well as a 124ish-year-old copy of Louisa May Alcott's Little Men (I am guesstimating the age based on the cover's similarity to the book of her letters and journals published in 1898 that I also got that day). The covers are almost entirely intact and still attached to the text block on both novels and is just separated where the end pages are attached to the text block and cover boards.
The way hardcovers are attached to books is: the very first and very last pages are a single folded sheet attached to the text block and the cover boards with glue, along with this wide, woven bit of cloth-like material that is glued to the spine and between the half of the end page that is glued to the cover board. The cloth bit basically kind of strengthens the joining of the cover to the text block so it isn't just the end pages holding it all together. For these two books, the end pages have split at the fold (though in the case of Little Men, the title page is missing as well) and all that is holding the cover on is that bit of woven material.
So, based on this -- and all the information and methods I've seen in the videos I've watched -- repairing the two books should be fairly simple. It looks like what I will have to do is cut the woven piece to detach the cover, attach a new piece of material to the spine, cut new end pages, and attach. PVA glue is what pretty much everyone in the videos used, and all the proper materials can be purchased from a craft store.
I don't know when I will actually do it, and I'm already nervous about the project because these books are so old. But they are otherwise in excellent shape and can be read if handled carefully, and I'd like to be able to do that without fear of the cover falling off. I will definitely keep you all posted.
Book terms I've learned from these videos, which I am kind of ashamed I did not already know:
Book binding - the process of putting a book together (I actually did know this one)
Signature - a set of folded pages
Text block - a collection of signatures sewn together to make a book
Cover board - the hard part of the cover
End sheets/end pages - a single folded sheet of paper glued to the front and back of the text block as well as the cover
Binding tape - a type of tape placed over the lines of thread used to sew the signatures into a text block (not everyone uses this)
Mull - the woven cloth placed over top of binding tape on the spine, usually also glued between the end page that is attached to the cover (sometimes to the surface of the end page, sometimes directly to the cover board)
Book cloth - material specially made for book binding
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