the text block
& the headbands

Gluing of the spine is not pictured (PVA dries so quickly) but here is what happens when you forget the second layer of wax paper in the press — just for a minute!  The endpapers will cover this … but the endpapers had their own set of Adventures in Gluing.

In general, though, gluing the spine worked out pretty well – the signatures still opened easily.

The glue is Lineco Neutral pH Adhesive.

I hadn’t any headbands on hand, as I’d not planned to use them. But the head and tail of the spine needed some neatening so I followed Margaux Kent’s tutorial from Peg and Awl to create them from the cord in the lovely BKS parcel and an old linen shirt. She noted that six-ply hemp cord worked but this cord didn’t say what it was (or what it was made of), so I did a test using a three-strand braided length, one twisted and knotted two-strand, and one single. There wasn’t a lot of difference between and the two- and three-ply and even the one-strand had more of a ridge than I thought it would have.

I went with the two-ply version, which was duly glued and trimmed to the text blocked. Trimmed very aggressively.  Too aggressively, as it turned out.

You can see that here with the damaged corner. The endpapers and mull will help fix this but, well, like the endpapers, the mull has its own glue issues. Or, well, the mull is fine; I have glue issues.

The endpapers are Southworth Linen 24lb business paper in Ivory from Staples and the unbleached cotton mull is from George Hill.

I tried using clamps with my wood boards but found it too hard to keep the text block aligned, so my small paper weight collection was put to its original purpose. 

According to family lore, the green ones belonged to an ancestor who worked in Belfast for a woman who died on the Titanic.

One of which is used here to show how badly wrinkled the endpapers are once dry.  Part of this could be because I soaked the paste brush, as advised, to make it easier to clean, and despite wringing it out, it may have just carried too much moisture.  Or – more likely and – the paper was too light and thin for this purpose.

Regardless, it is still a text block. And while it doesn’t open quite as widely as before, it still walks like a book.