How a book moves through here

Roughly the same eight steps every time, whatever the volume. The order matters more than the speed, and the last step is the one people find hardest to accept.

1. Examination, before anything is touched

Collation first: every section counted, every plate accounted for, every earlier repair noted. Half the surprises in a rebinding are things a previous binder did and did not record. I write the collation down before opening a single joint.

2. Decide how little to do

The default is always the smallest intervention that will let the book be read for another fifty years. A sound text block with a failed joint does not need rebinding; it needs a joint. Rebinding a book that did not require it destroys evidence permanently.

3. Pulling

Only if step two demanded it. Old adhesive comes off with paste and patience, never with heat and never with solvent unless the alternative is losing the paper.

4. Guarding and repair

Japanese tissue, wheat starch paste, and a great deal of time. Tears are mended along the fibre. Nothing is trimmed to tidy an edge.

5. Sewing

On cords for anything that will be opened often, on tapes for anything that must lie flat. Thread weight is chosen from the section count and the paper thickness, not from habit.

6. Rounding and backing

The step where impatience shows up years later. The swell has to be right before the hammer comes anywhere near the spine.

7. Covering

Quarter or full, cloth or leather, decided by how the book will actually be used. A reference volume that lives on a desk gets a hard-wearing cloth without apology.

8. Weight, and waiting

A week under boards, minimum. This is the step clients ask me to skip and the one I never will. Adhesive that has not finished moving will move in the finished book instead, and then the work was for nothing.