I was sent a second book after my first one fell apart. Unfortunately the second one fell apart also. This really comes down to an issue of the printer not Evil Hat and I felt bad asking for a third copy of the book even though the second one was defective as well. Its signatures were still glued together but they had separated from the cloth band (super) in the spine. I decided to try and fix it myself. It has been several weeks since I fixed it and in that time I have read the book cover to cover as well as leaving it open overnight several times and there has been no loosening of the repaired binding. I am not promising this will work for you but it worked for me. Enter all the usual caveats here about me not being responsible if you ruin your copy with excessive gluing.
Materials:
Elmer's Multi-Purpose Glue-All White Glue
Wax paper
A long thin wooden stick, I used a shish kabob stick
Spring Clamps, I used 4
Fingers, I used 10
1. I took a piece of wax paper several inches longer than the height of the book, I then folded it to the width of the spine so that it was several layers thick and fed it down into the spine of the book so that was between the hard outer spine and the cloth (super) that the pages are glued onto. This was done to keep from gluing the pages to the inside of the hard spine of the book.
2. I opened the book wide and set it up vertically, so I could see where all the signatures were loose. I then poured glue down between the cloth (super) and the loose pages. The hardest part was estimating how much glue to use, imo less is better than more. I spread the glue around more with the shish kabob stick until I was sure I had a nice even coating between the super and the loose pages. I flipped the book over and did the same thing from the other side.
3. I closed up the book and arraigned all the signatures so that they were lined up on the top and bottom evenly, then I pressed them all down into the spine so that the signature edges were pressed into the glued super, and the super was pressed into the wax paper which was pressed into the inside of the outer spine.
4. I clamped the book closed with the spring clamps, double checked that all of the pages were aligned properly (flush with each other), and wiped up any excess glue that oozed out of the top and bottom of the spine.
5. I left it clamped over night.
6. The next day I removed the clamps, opened the book, and pulled out the wax paper. Parts of the wax paper stuck to the super, I used the skish kabob stick to gently remove them. And the book was fixed.
