Wednesday, July 1, 2009

This ledger from the Johnson County Historical Society was in bad shape. The boards were warped, the spine piece had come detached, and the covers were almost completely off but for one small area. The covers were so far gone I decided to replace them altogether. I kept the cloth from the front board so I could attach the title to the front of the new case.

The board that most of the covers are made of was excellent at sopping up all kinds of flood goo and smells absolutely horrible. When we
can, we keep the original covers but in a situation like this it made more sense to completely rebind the ledger. Since we didn’t need to keep the cover boards I was able to peel the layers away from the areas of the page that didn’t release easily, without risk of tearing the paste-downs.