Restore Your Valuable Documents- or Make Your Own Book - Document repair and book binding arn't that difficult
This article was triggered by Ian Roger's article, Ye Old Spectrum Part Two where he describes using PVA (Polyvinyl Acetate) adhesive to renovate the cardboard box for one of his collection of Spectrum computers, which suffered flood damage.
(1) INTRODUCTION
No doubt, engineering types treasure their manuals and books that may be falling apart, are damaged, or simply worn and grubby.
Once you get the hang of applying the glue it works a treat. I have recovered documents that appeared to be beyond recovery. In one case I had a valuable World War Two book where the cover and some of the pages had been badly water damaged.
I found a book about the same size at a charity shop and removed the hardback cover. I then removed the old cover and tided up the pages. I borrowed a copy of the book from the central library and copied any bad pages from that. Then removed the bad pages and glued the copies in.
I put in new blank front and back pages, sanded the edges, fitted the new cover and surprise surprise, if you didn't know the original state of the book you would never guess it had been repaired. I was greatly surprised and pleased. The cover I substituted was much better quality than the original too.
The big secret is to get the PVA to the right consistency and be sparing with it- PVA forms a very strong bond on ordinary paper. Glossy paper is not so good. The thing to remember is that you can always apply more glue, but you can't take it off once it has set. The other secret is not to rush- let the glue fully dry before you continue to the next stage.