Letter in gold with large, rather heavy, black-face letters. Reduce the lettering to as few words as possible.
No rule can be given as to the glue to be used. Let your binder be sure that what he uses is good, whether the price he pays be high or low. He can tell whether it is good or not by testing it. Glue pots should be cleaned out frequently. Glue should be treated with judgment as to heat and degree of thickness at which it is used. It is animal matter that quickly changes its character and loses its strength under wrong conditions.
The boards to be used in a book should depend, as to quality and thickness, on the character of the volume they cover. Expensive boards on a book which will probably soon be too dirty to be kept, are not essential.
Neither strings nor tapes need to be laced into the boards on ordinary library work. They hold well if carefully glued down on the inside, and very well if pasted between two boards or into a split in one.
Plates
The first diagram shows in section a plate pasted on to a leaf of a book. This method is faulty, because it takes up some of the back margin of the leaf; if the leaf is pressed back the plate is apt to split off.
The second diagram shows the method of attaching a plate by means of a “guard.”
From report of the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding. Edited for Society of Arts. London: Bell & Sons, 1905.
Some books are best bound with tight backs, some with loose. There is no invariable rule in regard to this; it depends partly on the thickness of the book. Very thick volumes should have loose backs, usually.