Max Marbles/Bookbinder

This is what we call a tightback, the leather was glued directly to the spine. Though a good technique, you can see the vertical lines on the spine where the binding has cracked the spine. The major line is actually where the Old and New Testaments converge. It’s there that the Family Record was found.

This document was cleaned, flattened, mended, deacidified and scanned. Here is a before of the original and an after of the corrected digital scan. Working at 600 dpi allows you to get down to where pen strokes and tears are seemingly a half inch wide!

Hit his old cloth bound book is now ready for rebuilding the spine and rebacking. Not too much page repair and cosmetics will be simple.

Tested more than a few solvents before cleaning this painting. After all was done it cleaned up nicely. Now it’s drying with a coat of damar varnish.

During the 1890s South Dakota organized a regiment to go to war. The ephemera and photos of the album do well in showing that experience. I also made an ePub book of the albums scans.