It's my grandfather's cookery book, the spine has come away entirely and the boards are detached, but the text block is sound and no pages are loose. The binder quoted £180 for a full rebind in cloth with new endpapers, about six weeks. I have no reference point at all for whether that's a bargain or a mugging, and part of me wonders whether I should learn to do it instead.
I'd push back on rebinding this at all. Once the original binding comes off, that evidence is gone permanently — the sewing structure, the original cloth, the binder's ticket if there is one — and for a book whose value to you is that it was your grandfather's, that's part of the object rather than packaging. Ask the binder about a sympathetic repair or a reback, and ask what a clamshell box would cost as an alternative: for a book you want to keep but not necessarily use daily, a box protects it for less money and reverses nothing.
The box option deserves more attention than it gets. I had two family books boxed instead of rebound and it cost well under a rebind each, and neither has deteriorated further in a decade of sitting on a shelf.
The learn-it-yourself route is real but price it honestly. Bone folder, decent PVA and paste, needles, linen thread, an awl, book cloth, boards, a knife and a cutting mat, plus something to press with, comes to somewhere in the region of £60 to £120 to get started depending on how much you improvise — a couple of chipboard offcuts and heavy books stands in for a press for a long time. What that doesn't buy you is the ability to do it well on the first attempt. Budget your first three or four books as charity shop hardbacks you don't care about, because you will destroy at least one.
Whatever you decide, don't do what I did to a family book before I knew better. I reattached a spine with a contact adhesive from the hardware shop because it was strong and it was in the drawer, and it is now permanently welded, discoloured through the paper, and no conservator can undo it without destroying the leaf edges. Reversibility is the whole ethic of the craft and I learned it the one way you can't take back. Wheat starch paste and a good PVA, or a professional, and nothing from a tube that says instant.
£180 is fair for the hours. Ask about a reback and a box before you commit to a full rebind — both may suit this book better.
@bobbin_bind · last mo. · 2 replies
That's a fair price and probably a modest one. Walk through what it contains: pulling the book, cleaning old adhesive off the spine without damaging the folds, repairing whatever tears turn up once you're in there, resewing or reinforcing, new endpapers, rounding and backing, making boards, covering, casing in, and then a day or two in the press between each of several stages. That's realistically eight to fourteen hours of skilled hand work spread over weeks, plus cloth, board, thread and paper. Divide £180 by that and you'll see it isn't where the money is going.
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@threeleggedcat · last mo.
Also ask specifically about a reback rather than a full rebind. If the sewing is sound and only the spine has failed, a competent reback keeps the original boards and costs a good deal less, because the pulling and resewing — the expensive part — never happens.
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