Susan Mills has started an audio interview project called Bookbinding Now. She interviewed me last week, and we talked for about fifteen minutes about book conservation, my background, and tools. I have to confess I haven’t listened to it, since hearing the sound of my own recorded voice makes me cringe. But apart from Susan and myself, I encourage everyone else to check it out.
The Bookbinders’ Pension and Asylum Society
From: The Bookbinder, London, Raithby, Lawerence & Co., 1889.
Tearing Very Thin Tissue Strips
There are many techniques to make thin strips of tissue, useful for paper repairs between lines of text or even between letters on a page. One relatively easy method I’ve been using involves modifying a standard ‘2a’ jewelers tweezers. I find Dumont, Swiss made, to be of superior quality. It is a fairly easy way to get long, parallel strips, or intricately curved parallel strips.
The tips are reshaped, either by filing or abrasives, made round, thinner and can be sharpened. A sharper tip will cut through more fibers, with less of a feathered edge. A more rounded tip will create a larger feathered edge. Tweezers are made from unhardened steel, so they are easy to reshape. The number of fibers cut through can also be controlled by the amount of pressure when scoring, and by the hardness of the material that the tissue is scored on.
The width of the lines scored can be easily adjusted by using holding your index finger in between the blades. Someday I will thread a screw through one of the blade arms, to allow an even more precise adjustment. But even as it is, it is possible to score strips as thin as .5 mm, and scoring both sides of the repair halves the amount of time spent scoring.
Peachey Conservation 