Machine-made headbands can be bought by the yard. Such bands are merely glued on, but as they have but little strength, should not be used.
Where leather joints are used, the headbands may be worked on pieces of soft leather sized and screwed up. If the ends are left long and tied in front while the book is being covered, they may be conveniently let into grooves in the boards before the leather joint is pasted down. This method, I think, has little constructive value, but it certainly avoids the rather unfinished look of the cut-off headband.
CHAPTER XII
Preparing for Covering—Paring Leather—Covering—Mitring Corners—Filling-in Boards
PREPARING FOR COVERING
After the headband is worked, a piece of brown or other stout paper should be well glued on at the head and tail, care being taken that it is firmly attached to the back and the headband. When dry, the part projecting above the headband is neatly cut off, and the part on the back well sand-papered, to remove any irregularity caused by the tie-downs attaching the headband. For most books this will be quite sufficient lining up, but very heavy books are best further lined up between the bands with linen, or thin leather. This can be put on by pasting the linen or leather and giving the back a very thin coat of glue.
Fig. 58.
The only thing now left to do before covering will be to set the squares and to cut off a small piece of the back corner of each board at the head and tail, to make it possible for the boards to open and shut without dragging the head-cap out of place. The form of the little piece to be cut off varies with each individual binder, but I have found for an octavo book that a cut slightly sloping from the inside cutting off the corner about an eighth of an inch each way, gives the best result (see [fig. 58]). When the corner has been cut off, the boards should be thrown back, and the slips between the book and the board well pasted. When these have soaked a little, the squares of the boards are set; that is, the boards are fixed so that exactly the same square shows on each board above head and tail. A little larger square is sometimes an advantage at the tail to keep the head-cap well off the shelf, the essential thing being that both head and both tail squares should be the same. In the case of an old book that has not been recut, the edges will often be found to be uneven. In such cases the boards must be made square, and so set that the book stands up straight.