Hot take: cutting the spine off a hardcover for rebinding is just lazy work

I tried it on a 1978 encyclopedia set I found at a goodwill in Akron last month and the pages fell apart after three opens. Why not just do a proper spine detach with a scalpel and save the original signatures?

2 comments

2 Comments

emma_hart14d agoMost Upvoted

That 1978 glue is different from modern stuff though, it gets brittle as hell after 40+ years. Cutting it clean is the only way to not wreck the signatures.

lilymurphy14d ago

i read somewhere that those old encyclopedia bindings are often just glued anyway so cutting them is basically the same thing.