Giving a worn-out notebook a new hard cover

One of my oldest notebooks, full of notes I did not want to lose, had a cover that finally gave up. The spine cracked, the front board came loose and the corners were worn to the card. The pages themselves were still perfectly sound. Instead of retiring it, I built it a new case. It was a satisfying project and a good introduction to case binding.

What a case binding is

A case binding is the familiar hard-cover book. The text block, all the pages sewn or glued together, is made separately from the case, which is two boards and a spine piece covered in cloth or paper. The two are then joined with endpapers and a strip of fabric called a mull.

Because the parts are made separately, it is possible to remove an old case and give the same pages a new one.

Removing the old cover

I carefully cut through the old endpaper along the inside hinge with a sharp knife, front and back, and lifted the text block out. The old spine lining came away easily because the glue had become brittle. I scraped off loose glue with a blunt knife, gently, without damaging the folds of the sections.

The original sewing was still intact, which made the rest of the job much simpler. If the sewing had failed, I would have needed to resew the sections first.

Preparing the text block

• I glued new endpapers to the first and last pages along a narrow strip at the spine edge. I used plain paper, but paste paper would look lovely.
• I brushed a thin layer of flexible PVA along the spine and laid a piece of mull over it, overlapping onto each side by about three centimetres.
• I added a strip of strong paper over the mull as a spine lining and let it dry under weight.

Making the new case

I measured the text block carefully. The boards should be slightly larger than the pages, typically about three millimetres extra on the top, bottom and fore-edge, so the cover protects the pages.

I cut two boards and a thin spine strip of card the width of the text block's spine. Then I laid them on the back of a piece of book cloth, leaving a gap between each board and the spine strip. That gap, called the joint, is what lets the cover open. A good rule of thumb is about twice the thickness of the board.

I glued the boards and spine down, trimmed the cloth with a margin of about one and a half centimetres all around, cut the corners at an angle, and folded the edges over onto the inside of the boards.

Casing in

This is the moment where it becomes a book again. I placed the text block in the case, then brushed glue onto the outer endpaper and mull on one side, closed the cover onto it, and repeated for the other side. Then I put the whole thing between boards with baking paper inside each cover and pressed it overnight under a stack of heavy books.

The result

The renewed notebook is sturdier than it was when new. It opens well, sits flat on the shelf and the old pages inside are exactly as they were. The cloth is a dark green, and I added a small paper label on the spine with the dates the notebook covers.

There is something deeply pleasing about saving a book rather than replacing it. I have since recased two more old notebooks, and I suspect it will not be the last time.