If you can supply the design (which should always be bold and simple), any wood-carver will, for a few shillings, execute it in intaglio on a block of wood, which should be at least one inch in thickness, and also have a transverse piece screwed to its back to prevent its warping. With this you can stamp off as many covers as you want. Retouch them by hand with tracer and stamp. If blackened, and then touched up with gilding and varnished, such books are very attractive, and should sell well. Any person who can design, or even trace, a pattern can have it cut on a block for a few shillings, and anybody having such a block can print off any number of impressions in damp leather, and retouch them with stamp and tracer, and glue them to cardboard covers, for books or albums, and sell them at a good profit. Yet, though this has been clearly set forth by me several times in manuals, &c., I have never yet met with a single amateur who has attempted it. There is as a rule far more suffering in this world from laziness, inertness, and an indisposition to try to do something than from any other contaminating influences which lead to poverty.
When a book is even woefully dilapidated, so that there is no margin to stitch, do not despair. First separate every leaf, smooth it, and, if necessary, dampen it with a slight infusion of tragacanth. Then, if there is even the twentieth part of an inch of margin left, take strips of good, tough, thin paper, and with care stitch the leaves to these strips. For some severe cases you must use very thin transparent or tracing paper to gum over the text, but which must be visible through it. This, if neatly done, does not look so badly as it would seem. If one strip be folded and used to connect two leaves, the stitching and binding become easy. I have already described how to restore margins and fill worm-holes.
I think that if any person of literary habits will consider all that is written in this chapter, and will begin to practise it with deliberation and care, he will surely succeed, and find it a very profitable and agreeable occupation. All of such men have pamphlets, MSS., autographs, letters, newspaper clippings, and papers, which, if classed and made up into book-form, would be more available for use, and far more valuable. I say nothing of repairing old books; it speaks for itself as an easy and lucrative employment. And it may be observed that a young man who can thus bind and repair would make a most valuable assistant-librarian, though the business can be mastered very soon indeed; and it would often happen that in choosing a secretary, where there are many papers to file or a library to look after, or an assistant in an antiquarian book-shop—particularly the latter—preference would be given to one who had mastered practically what is taught in this chapter. And as on board ship the best sailor is generally the best mender—every old tar being proverbially skilled in repairing and having a quick eye for emergencies, even on shore—so the one who can rehabilitate and “form” books will probably be a good assistant in all things.
It may often happen to a writer or copyist that he has occasion to erase a word, and cannot write over the space lest the ink should spread. In old times this was remedied as follows:—A very little juniper gum, levigated to the finest powder, was rubbed over the spot with a soft linen rag.
In all kinds of repairing or technical work it is sometimes necessary to draw circles when the artist has no compasses. Yet this can be done to perfection, almost by free-hand, and very easily. Take several sheets of paper or a blotter; lay on it the piece to be drawn on. Take a pencil in the fingers, as is usual, rest the hand on the nail of the little finger as a point—having previously pulled the sleeve of his coat well up, so as to get a full view—and then with the left hand draw or revolve the paper. In most cases a perfect circle will be the result. This is admirable practice for learning to draw circles entirely by free hand, as may be found by experiment.
Paper can be made, if not absolutely fire-proof, at least deprived of inflammability, by being steeped in alum-water, or in oleum tartari per deliquium, or oil of tartar. Stationers might find a sale for such paper. If the document which was thrown by a certain Duchess into the fire had been thus prepared, it might have been rescued by a bystander before it perished.
The art of preservation, or prevention of injury, is allied to restoration, for which reason it would be well if more people who send books by mail would use protecting corners, which can readily be made by anybody with a pair of strong scissors from thin sheet brass, tin, or iron. Take a piece of metal of a rectangular shape, as follows:—
Then double it into a triangle over a piece of cardboard, or of wood, exactly the thickness of the cover of the book:—
