Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible

This was my mom’s story Bible from childhood that she asked me to repair. What a treasure!

Front cover …. this is a book that was loved and used, and did not just sit on a shelf.

Beautiful golden foredges!

Definitely I will not be trimming any of that off!

This book was in pretty good condition, considering its age, but somewhere along the way it had split apart, almost exactly in half.

First, I took off the cover. It came away in two sections.

After I had it off, then I cut off the two pieces of the spine, so those could be joined back together.

Next was time to remove the yuck from the back of those pieces … old glue leftover from the past.

Then glue them back together, using some mending tissue for a base on the back side.

I did not really like how it turned out because some of the lettering was lost entirely, so I did not use this, after all.

Next up, the spine, same kind of yuck on that. Interesting to see that the bottom half of the book had a whole lot more of it than the top. I wonder why? (I don’t know.)

Made a batch of wheat paste to soften the old glue.

After it sits on the old glue for a few minutes, it comes off surprisingly easily, and this step in the project is not nearly as gross as this picture makes it look, thankfully.

Several pages needed to be repaired with mending tissue.
Most had only a small tear but a few needed more attention.

After all are repaired, then stacked them up in order for re-sewing.

Getting organized before sewing the signatures back together . . .

Still sewing . . .

Completed the first part of sewing (about 25 signatures) . . . but . . . .

There are still several pages that are loose and not part of any signatures. These are added individually, this is called “tipping in” for those pages.

Here are all the repaired pages during the first part of drying. Later, they are laid flat to finish drying.

I wanted to re-use the original endpapers so that the book would look the same as much as possible, but they had leftover old covering on them.

I sanded that off as much as possible.

Then the two sides came apart, as I expected they would, because it was so fragile.

Repaired that with another bit of mending tissue.

Preparing the new book cover, with plain black bookcloth.

Glued the original covers right on top of the new bookcloth so the book will look and feel familiar. The contrast is not nearly as obvious in person as it looks in this photo.

I did not use the repaired spine, after all, and instead, I copied the main image and glued it on. I kind of wish it was a little lower on the spine, to align more closely with the same image on the front cover, so that’s a lesson learned for next time. I didn’t want to risk messing up the bookcloth, though, so I left it like it is. This is another situation that is not nearly as obvious in person as it looks in the picture.

All done!

Merry Christmas, Mom!