Binding issues and repair

[Cowboy Hat]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with repairing their star wars revised and expanded books.

My copy is perfect apart from the second page which has finally come apart and taken the spine with it.

It's a pretty clean break though and there are no loose pages. It looks as if a little glue would put it back together.

I've looked at a few online tutorials but they don't seem appropriate to this particular book/break and book repair shops are exceedingly expensive.

So any advice that people might have, especially if they've fixed their own book would be really appreciated.

Man I wish I could just buy another copy from the shop rather than having hunt down yet another expensive copy that may or may not be broken!
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"The Force will be with you. Sometimes."

[cheshire]

Yeah, I used to repair books for a library. They agreed that it was too expensive to do it out of house, so they let me read a few tutorials, they bought me some tools, I got to go to a few workshops and it turned out being my favorite part of the job. I've used the techniques that I've learned on a number of my books.

DO NOT USE YOUR HOUSEHOLD GLUE!!!!

I'd like it if you could post a couple of pics to make sure that I have a good idea of what you're looking at. I think I understand the problem, but you're not using the standard lingo to communicate exactly what the problem is. What you describe could denote two different issues. One of them fixable without too much hubbub.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Cowboy Hat]

[Riij Skootu]

Let me just add, I used to work with Cheshire at the library, he is very good at what he does.
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Do or Do Not ...there is no try. -Yoda

[Cowboy Hat]

Oh look...apparently I can use photobucket...



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"The Force will be with you. Sometimes."

[Cowboy Hat]

Just the laptop camera I have, but hopefully you can see it's a nice clean break at least. I hope.
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"The Force will be with you. Sometimes."

[cheshire]

Ugh. Yeah, that repair took me a while to learn how to do. I could send you the repair materials al gratis as it's just a piece of double sided hinge tape. I'd say if you're like me you've got about a 30% chance of getting it on the first try. The sad news is that if you screw up the repair the book is not going to be the same. It's one of those things that if you screw it up, it's REALLY screwed up.

I've got a 2nd edition that I've done this repair on, and it's held together just fine. I've never messed up any of my own books with this repair, but I've botched a few library books. By the end of my tenure there I had about a 75% success rate. I did exactly this repair on a friend's book and it's held together just fine.

The process sounds simple (as book repair goes anyway). You have two pieces of cloth stitched together, and on opposite ends they have book glue that you wet down to activate. You wet down one side first, then apply to the text block (the back edge of all the pages) and the page with the 5 stormtroopers on it. Press down hard, and let dry overnight with wax paper in between the wet tape and dry tape. If you did it right, then you proceed with the next phase where you wet down the other piece of hinge tape, and press it down on the inside of the spine and also stick it to the page with the two stormtroopers on it (that's the part that you're most likely to screw up). Let dry overnight with wax paper in between the pages.

If you live anywhere near Boston, I'd be more than happy to meet with you and do the repair so long as you understand the risk of failure. I always attempt this repair on my books because the risk of doing nothing is worse than the risk of failure. Without the text block in tact you're going to have a lot of movement within the spine and the book will continue to degrade, and will very likely degrade rapidly.

Your options:
1) Get with me or someone else about repairing the book inexpensively. However, if you have to send it somewhere, the cost of shipping to and from may possibly exceed the cost of buying a cheap acceptable copy off of eBay. I've seen them go for $13 before shipping, but I bought one for $3.00 (in pretty darn good condition) not too long ago, $8.00 including shipping.

2) You could let the book continue to degrade.

3) You can just buy a new one cheap off of eBay. I might be willing to purchase the damaged book (at a damaged book rate, of course) in hopes of being able to repair it myself, and pass it along to another player to keep it in the gaming world. If we could work a deal, it would offset your cost by a few bucks.

4) You can try to repair the book yourself, which will cost you nothing, but you may have trash for a book if you fail. The book would have no resale value. I'd send pics or links to pics on how to do the repair.

As much as I hate to admit it, the market is right at the moment to pick up another book. I'm the type that always wants to save a book, but I was just checking out of curiosity this morning, and there are a fair few for good prices on eBay.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[cheshire]

Page 25 of the following link shows a similar technique for the same repair:

http://www.ioba.org/StepByStepBookRepair.pdf

And another link:

http://www.wikihow.com/Repair-a-Book%27s-Binding

And as I said, if you want to try this on your own, then I can send you the length of cloth tape at no cost.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Cowboy Hat]

[Bren]

[Cowboy Hat]

[cheshire]

Oh geez. What's the shipping rate for getting a book across the pond? I'd be willing to do the repair for you, but I'd need financial help in shipping it back to you.

Edit:It looks like something like the book would be about $14 USD (estimated of course) to get it back to you.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Raven Redstar]

Can you ship USPS book rate to the UK? It's fairly inexpensive if I recall correctly.

[cheshire]

[Cowboy Hat]