I'd just have to say that C&S Redbook was notorious for having a poor quality spine. Even when it was new back in 1977 the spine split on my original copy after less than a year because both the pages were set wrong (the book was printed on single 8 1/2" x 11" pages instead of double-sized 11"x17" pages and, there were no signatures. The book was simplebound by affixing glue to the back of an unreinforced spine , and the glue used by the printers was of the wrong kind. The printer used some kind of wood glue to bind these books. Also Redbook it is simple bound being held only with the glue. Real bookbinders stitch the binding together, and then also glue it, providing double strength so that the book can last for many decades, ...even centuries. Modern bookbinders also use a special kind of glue called PVa or Polyvinyl Acetate. This is a neutral PH glue that does not truly harden when it sets and sets with a soft rubbery composure. Throughout the life of the binding, the PVa remains flexible and bendable, and does not crack or split, very unlike the cheap glue used in the Chivalry & Sorcery 1st edition book.
I bought a copy of the C&S Red Book just last week that arrived in near mint condition. Simply opening the book to read it split the back of the spine, and then on the inside of the spine the glue cracked and pages came loose.
This was a copy that had sat unused on shelf for ...uhh probably thirty-five years, ...maybe.
Books can be rebound by hand, and I used to rebind ancient books from museums, and family bibles that had been handed down since about the time the Pilgrims first came off ships and settled on the eastern seaboard. I routinely handed books that were more than a hundred years old, and commonly handled books that were from one to three hundred years old.
The procedure for rebinding such books are simple.
Detach the book cover from the fly cover. usually this destroys the fly covers, however that is not a big deal, basically you want to have the spine of the book exposed.
Once the spine is exposed you use wheat paste mixed with a bit of water to clean the spine. The wheat paste is PH neutral so will not damage old or delicate book pages. The wheat paste will also automatically remove any glue or adhesive that is still sticking to the book spine. Generally you paint the wheat paste on with a paintbrush and leave it on for about twenty four hours, and then clean the spine the next day using a clean paint brush along with fresh wheat paste to remove the wheat paste and the glue that was on the book. Wash, rinse, & repeat the procedure until there is no glue remaining on the spine.
With the C&S redbook the spine would then come apart and all the pages would be loose. With a regular stitchbound book the signatures (bundles of pages) would still have to be cut free of the linen threads that were sewn into the spine to stitch the book together. The book literally needs to be unstitched. Also any binding tape needs to be removed as well.
Once the thread has been cut and removed the sewing holes cleaned and cleared, the page groups need to be carefully restitched together using new linen thread and where needed, binding tape replaced or sewn into the cleaned spine to reinforce it. You may opt at this time to add a bookmark, which is a piece of ribbon or silk that is affixed to the spine that is twice as long as the spine. You might also want to glue a length of linen tape as long as the spine to the spine to reinforce it.
At this point you can re-add the book cover by using two brand new fly leaf pages, by gluing the fly leafs to the cover, and then gluing the fly leafs to the linen spine.
Here's a pretty good tutorial on repairing a book.
Bookbinding Tutorial by JamesDarrow on DeviantArtAnd here's a place where you can buy your own bookbinding supplies
Bookbinding SuppliesI'd charge about $150 to rebind a book. I used to rebuild books and book covers as well, and charged even more for that. With the older books the pages dry rot and sometimes literally crumbled into dust when they were handled. I would carefully unbind these book, and then separate the pages, digital scan them, then reprint the book on new strong acid-free paper, then I'd rebuild the book covers from scratch and also completely rebind the book.
Right now I'm working on a first American edition of
Tales of Ancient Egypt by
Sir Gaston Maspero and
Hasan M. El-Shamy as translated by
Mrs. A.S.G. Johns, which is right now one hundred and two years old.
Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero KCMG (June 23, 1846 -- June 30, 1916) was a French Egyptologist known for popularizing the term "Sea Peoples" in an 1881 paper. In November 1880 Professor Maspero went to Egypt as head of an archeological mission sent there by the French government, which ultimately developed into the well-equipped
Institut français d'archéologie orientale. This occurred a few months before the death of Mariette, whom Maspero then succeeded as director-general of excavations and of the antiquities of Egypt.
Aware that his reputation was then more as a linguist than an archaeologist, Maspero's first work in the post was to build on Mariette's achievements at Saqqara. He expanded their scope from the early Old Kingdom to the later, with particular interest in tombs with long and complete hieroglyphic inscriptions that could help illustrate the development of the Egyptian language. Selecting five later Old Kingdom tombs, he was successful in that aim, finding over 4,000 lines of hieroglyphics which were then sketched and photographed.
As an aspect of his attempt to curtail the rampant illegal export of Egyptian antiquities by tourists, collectors and agents for the major European and American museums, Maspero arrested the
Abd al-Russul brothers from the notorious treasure-hunting village of Gorna, who confessed under torture to having found the great cache of royal mummies at
Deir el-Bahri in July 1881. The cache was moved to Cairo as soon as possible to keep it safe from robbers.
In 1886, he resumed work begun by Mariette to uncover the Sphinx, removing more than 65 feet (20 m) of sand and seeking tombs below it (which he did not find, but have later been found and left unopened). He also introduced admission charges for Egyptian sites to the increasing number of tourists to pay for their upkeep and maintenance.
In spite of the brutality towards the
Abd al-Russul brothers, Maspero was popular with museum keepers and collectors because he was known to be a "pragmatic" director of the Service of Antiquities, one who would allow them to remove from the country what he did not want for the Bulak Museum in Cairo. Maspero did not attempt to halt all collecting, but rather sought to control what went out of the country and to gain the confidence of those who were regular collectors. When Maspero left his position in 1886 and was replaced by a series of other directors who attempted to halt the trade in antiquities, his absence was much lamented.
The stories in the book are an incredible picture of life in ancient Egypt being scrolls and papyrus documents which were first translated from ancient Egyptian and Coptic into French, and then later re-translated into English. Fortunately I won't have to provide my digitized copy to Project Gutenberg, because Google scanned a 4th edition copy back in 2004, and has made it available online as part of their Google Books collection here;
Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt - G. 1846-1916 Maspero, Agnes Sophia Griffith Johns - Google LivrosInterestingly Google re-asserted copyright, filing for a new copyright back in 2004, but that's on their 4th edition scanned copy.
Pix for the Lols!
Maspero's Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt - Google Photos
