Thursday, August 18, 2011

Holy Book Repair part lll

So, I suspect your glue is dry enough now, we can put in the endpapers.  Cut them out carefully.  They are a practice art to get right, and get in place right.  Remember lining up the text block with the green tape?  Yup, well this was why.  Sometimes, often times, it is nice to use a glue stick for this, but we very sure you have acid free. Don't trust the packaging, trust the words on the glue stick itself. We ran out of glue while making Jennie's Nighty and the Christmas Concert last year and I got glue sticks which claimed to be acid free, but they didn't actually print that on the stick itself.  They made the paper turn green.  Not good.  For this project I took my acid free glue stick and coated the inside cover and then half an in onto the first sheet of the text block.  Ever notice the first sheets are stuck together at the inside edge in a hard cover book?  This is why.  It helds to hold the text block in place, give extra support to the work of the mull.  Use your bone folder to smooth the endpaper into place.  Best to start it off from the outside edge of the cover.  If you have miss cut it you can always trim it to match the pages.  You never get another chance to make it line up and look good on the cover.  Run the bone folder gently down along the crease and close the book.  Repeat on the back cover.

And done.  It is good to put wax paper inside the endpapers and press the book a while.  Perhaps not as long as the two weeks I was away, but you can if you want to.  I took the finished bible to the adorable little old priest and he was so pleased.  He asked me what he owed me.  Well, I really didn't want to charge him full price, he is such an adorable little old priest, so I said, "Well, Dad, you can have it for Father's Day."  Saved me having to get him a card.*

* Roman Catholics and the like in the crowd do not panic.  My dad is a catholic priest, he just isn't a Roman Catholic priest.  Anglicans, and others, can marry.  (Fifty-five years this month. And yes, they are both adorable.)

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