Wet Cleaning and Report

I was going through my old pictures and realized I had not yet posted any wet cleaning of books. Since this particular book belongs to me, I wrote a treatment report for it. I will post that with pictures instead of the usual format.

Treatment Report

Title: Alice in Wonderland – Carroll        Date Completed: August 2009
Format: Book
Material: Cloth                                     Time:  28 hours
Binding: Full

Condition: Text block was originally perfect bound, but the adhesive had delaminated in spots, causing the text block to be split into several “sections.” The text block was completely detached from the front cover. Pages were yellow with acid and incredibly brittle. Almost every page was torn or creased, with pieces missing. A few pages were missing entirely. Covers were in surprisingly good condition, with the exception of a piece missing from the spine. There were a few cracks in the cloth, but the spine was still attached, joints were not too worn and corners were not bumped.

Treatment: Pages were separated from text block on by one and placed between sheets of Reemay. Once all the pages were separated, they were soaked in cold, filtered water for 20 minutes. The initial pH of the paper was 3.5, so after a water bath, the pages were soaked in Magnesium Bicarbonate [Mg(HCO3)2] for an additional 30 minutes. The pages, attached to the Reemay, were then hung to remove excess liquid, pressed between blotting paper, and dried on the drying rack. The pH after washing was 6.5. Once dried, all pages were aligned and inspected for damage. Missing pages were replaced with acid-free Dove Grey paper and repairs were made with heat-set tissue. The pages were then divided into signatures of six and guarded with Japanese tissue (via wheat starch paste). When all sections were attached (sewn one on) and aligned, they were nipped in the press to reduce swell. Using pre-punched holes, the text block was sewn with tapes. A toned, linen lined, handmade paper endsheet was sewn in to replace the missing endpapers in the front. The spine was then lined with Japanese tissue (via wheat starch paste), head and tail bands were attached, and then the spine was lined with linen (via PVA) and rounded. The endsheets were lifted on the covers, and the original spine lining was removed, and then replaced with Japanese tissue and 10 pt board. The text block was re-attached to the boards by gluing the tapes and linen down under the lifted endsheets. The missing piece on the spine was replaced with Morike and toned with acrylics. The small cracks in the cover were repaired with Japanese tear strips, and also toned.

Notes:  Despite de-acidification, the pages remained terribly brittle. Some pages tore slightly during sewing, and it reached the point where continued repair with heat-set tissue was not worth the value of the book. Had this been a more prestigious book, the pages might have been individually lined with a very thin Japanese tissue for support. But this particular book was not worth such efforts.

Images:

These images show the book before treatment. Notice the breaks in the text block.

This is a pictures show the washing process, including the initial submerge in the bath (top), the amount of acid washed out with soaking (below), and a method of hanging the leaves to dry (bottom).

These are after images. I received a lot of brownie points for getting the text block back in the case without rebacking it. I was just lucky, considering I had to guard every folio for sewing.

Wet Leather

I came across this book on the end processing cart at S.U. (For those who don't know, the end processing cart is books for special collections which come to the lab for book plates or repair before becoming available to the public). Leather can be wet during the binding process. In fact, you want it to be so that it is flexible and will  stretch tight on the book. After it has been bound and on the shelf for a while, this is what happens when water is introduced. (The white you see is a Japanese tear strip for a hinge repair).

Wallpaper Samples - Part 3- Finishing Touches

Most of the wallpaper samples were intact, but there were a few with large areas missing. I tried two different treatment methods for these large areas. The first, and simplest was to simply replace the missing area with a similarly colored Morike. I would attach the Morike with paste before adding the Japanese tissue lining to the sample. Then I trimmed the Morike with the lining so it was flush. This is an example of this method.

The second method was to apply a thin Japanese tissue to the top of the sample, barely overlapping, with paste. Then tone the tissue with acrylics. (I think watercolor is generally more appropriate for this type of repair, but acrylic is all I had available. Therefore, I ensured this additional Japanese tissue layer could be removed, even after toning, by testing it on a small area. As long as the acrylic is not painted over the tissue edge, there should be no damage to the sample). I used this method sparingly because it was time consuming, difficult to match colors/patterns, and often unnecessary for the size of the missing area. These are two samples for which I did tone. 

After all the samples were treated, I made labels for each and interleaved sheets of Dove Gray, due to the variation in size. Finally, I encapsulated the samples in polyester film (Mylar) and constructed a screw-post binding (2010).

Limp Leather Long Stitch Binding

I was recently given some upholstery leather and wanted to find a way to use it. The leather was chrome tanned. This means the leather would be incredibly difficult to par and it's best use would be limp bindings.
To prepare the leather for a limp binding, I lined the back with paper and pressed it to ensure it dried as flat as possible. When I removed the leather, I noticed it had puckered in places from the paper shrinking. Fortunately I was able to fix this by rolling the leather. This unified the puckering and had a nice textual effect, which only worked because the leather was run through a machine at the upholstery factory. I gently sanded the leather to enhance the texture. Next, I trimmed the leather to the height I wanted, leaving the fore edge a little longer to trim later. Then I creased the area for the spine with a bone folder and cut slits for the sewing. Finally, I attached the text block and trimmed the fore edge. This is the end result (2010).

Wallpaper Samples - Part 2 - Wet Board Removal

As previously mentioned, the wallpaper samples I have been working on had two distinct adhesives, spray mount adhesive and gelatin paste. The spray mount could be removed dry by splitting the backing board. I tried to split the board on the samples with gelatin pastes, but the board did not cooperate. I could not get the bone folder between the layers. After struggling with this for a little while, I decided to try wet removal (which is how I identified the gelatin adhesive).
On the first sample, after I had partially removed some board with the bone folder, I dampened the back of the board using a sponge and a spray bottle. When the board was damp, I was able to roll it off in small amount with my thumb. With additional moisture, this proved more successful and I was able to remove board all the way down to the back of the paper. At this point, I decided to try soaking the sample. I spot tested the inks and when they proved water stable, I moved the sample to a warm water bath (supported by Reemay) and soaked the sample for about 10 minutes. Then I removed the sample, flipped the tray and used it to support the sample so that I could work on it over the sink. I was able to sufficiently  remove the board by rolling my thumb over the surface and picking up the final pieces with a spatula. When all the board was removed, I pasted out the sample on a piece of Mylar and lined it with Japanese tissue. Then I dried it between Reemay and blotting paper under weight.
These images show a sample before treatment, after wet removal of the board, and with an untrimmed Japanese tissue lining.

 

This process took longer, but the end result was much cleaner. I was able to remove ALL the board, unlike with the dry removal. And the risk of skinning the paper is greatly reduced as the adhesive gives.

Wallpaper Samples - Part 1 - Dry Board Removal

I recently began a new project dealing with hand painted wallpaper samples from the late 19th century. There were twenty-eight samples in total, in a variety of sizes. All of them had been mounted to boards, but with two different adhesives. Some were attached to just a backing board with a gelatin paste, and others were matted and attached to a backing board with spray mount adhesive. There was also a variety of damage to the samples. ranging from creasing to tears to large sections missing. Because space in the lab was limited, I divided the samples into four groups (based on level of damage) so I could removed them from the stacks in smaller increments.The ultimate goal for these samples was to remove the acidic backing boards and line with Japanese tissue for stability, then construct a box to house the collection.
As previously stated, there were two distinctly different adhesives which led to two different methods of removing the board. Fortunately for those that were matted, the mat boards were cut larger than the backing board and taped together on the back. Because there was not adhesive between the sample and the mat, I was able to simply remove the tape on the back and thus remove the mat. I found a surprise in one of these worth photographing.

Because the spray mount adhesive was not water soluble, I had to remove the backing board dry. I did this using a shaped bone folder. I removed the board slowly, in layers. Luckily these boards split easily. I continued removing layers until I was as close as I could comfortably get to the paper. Some areas lifted clean away from the paper without fuss. For the areas where the board was well and truly stuck, I used the bone folder to gently scrape and the surface and thin the board down to the last layer before the paper, and left it. Forced removal would skin the paper. The following picture shows this process about halfway through, and the tool used.

When the backing board was sufficiently removed, I pasted out the wallpaper on a sheet of Mylar and lined it with Japanese tissue. I dried the samples between Reemay and blotting paper under weight to keep them flat.
I did have some minor issues on the first couple samples with skinning the paper. After I began to get the hang of it, I realized this was because I was trying to take off too much backing board at once. I also found that when I was down to the last few layers, the thinner I could get the board, the easier it came away from the paper.
In the next parts I will discuss my wet board removal method, and how I treated the missing pieces on damaged samples.

First Design Binding - The Martian Chronicles

I decided I wanted to experiment with design binding. I went through my bookshelf looking for a good candidate and came across The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I removed the original covers, endpapers and the mull one the spine. The book was perfect bound and the spine was slightly rounded. Because of this I did not want to cut and rebind the text block out of fear I would loose a substantial amount of the margins. Instead I left the spine intact, lined it with linen (PVA) and gently hammered it to accentuate the round. Next I attached new end sheets and hand sewn head and tail bands. For the case, I decided to do a quarter leather with paste paper and leather onlays. The running theme was Mars-esque colors - brown, red, orange, etc.
The piece I choose for the spine had a great triangular shape on one edge, which I cleaned up and decided to incorporate into my design. I started by paring the turn-ins of the leather, cutting my boards to size, and back cornering the boards slightly. Then I began to attach the spine. First I pasted out the leather and let it sit to absorb the moisture. Next I placed the text block (with boards in position) into a finishing press, leaving enough of the spine edge out to work with. I removed the excess paste from the leather, attached the spine stiffener, and positioned it on the book, ensuring the spine stiffener was in the proper location. Then I rubbed the leather down on the boards, removed the book carefully from the press and did the turn-ins. I left a little extra sticking up at each turn-in for the head and tail caps, which I constructed by gently dragging the case along the bench. I tried string around the spine (in the joint) and left the cover to dry.
To make the onlays, I pared 1" strips of leather very thin, then pasted them together on a piece of Mylar. When I was happy with the placement. I removed the mylar and lined the back with Japanese tissue and put the leather in a press. When it had dried, I cut circles out of visually interesting areas, and saved them for my cover design.
When the leather on the spine had dried, I infilled the boards with blotting paper (to absorb some of my onlays), then attached the paste paper, slightly overlapping the leather. After this was pressed and dried, I added my onlays and pressed the book again, putting circles cut from folder stock over the onlays to force them down into the blotter. Finally, I stamped the cover and cased in the book. These are pictures of the finished product (2010).