After all the fits and starts to do this post I'm a little afraid it might not be all that interesting, but at least it will be informative. It is related to the shop as you'll see, so I'm posting it but it's not something you might expect to find here at Garage Journal.
Gus's Manual, Part I
With Gus coming to live with us I felt the first order of business should be a proper Mechanic's Manual, an old school one that provides tons of illustrations, photographs and is loaded with detailed "how to" information. I located an original 1948 Willys-Overland manual in South Dakota via eBay.
Inside it was complete and in excellent condition except for...
... the cover and the spine which was starting to fail. It was in need of repair and doing repairs to save an item is something I'm particularly fond of.
That's where the gentleman pictured earlier on the previous page, post #4827 comes in. His name is Christopher Hohn (Chris H) who grew up right across the street from me so I've know him my whole life. He's not only a good guy, skilled craftsman and avid auto racing enthusiast but also a true friend in a most sincere way.
He happens to be the proprietor of Lincoln Book Bindery located here locally. He started work there part time during his college years, then full time and eventually came to own the business. With 40 years experience Chris H knows books and their construction, inside and out. He agreed to take a look at the manual and see what could be done.
Chris H of course knew Mr Johnson and the welding shop growing up and we both agreed that Gus and the shop should have nothing but the best so we decided to re-bind the manual and give it a hard cover. A hard cover would be much more user friendly in a shop environment and durable as well.
Since Gus was now part of the shop and the manual belonged to Gus I felt a dedication page would be in order which we could easily do with the re-binding.
Here the layout and letter type for the dedication page was composed on a computer...
...and then printed on high quality paper. This over size page will be inserted in the manual as it's re-bound and then cut to proper size.
The first order of business was to deconstruct the manual removing the cover, old tape and all the staples. That leaves a stack of pages referred to as a
book block.
Next, due to this
book block's size, it will be sown with this over sewer (made in the 1930's BTW) using 9 needles...
...so these two needles on the far right were added and threaded.
Then starting with the back pages, working to the front, groups of roughly 15-30 pages are placed in the over-sewer. Note how wide the margin is at top where the old staples were. There is plenty of margin where it will now be sown.
The machine moves the spot the needles will descend with each stack to prevent over-sewing in the same spot. The groups of pages are then progressively stacked one on top of another and sown...
...until the
book block with the dedication page, cover and end papers are all sown together.
The
book block is now all sown together with the threads still attached to the machine.
The manual is then held in a press where the threads will be trimmed shorter and their ends will be glued with polyvinyl acetate ((C4H6O2)n) or PVA which is non acidic. (Is everyone taking notes for the test??)
Now the manual is ready to have the newly added end papers and dedication page trimmed to size using...
...this highly accurate but very expensive, paper cutter. It's a Prism model made by Colter & Peterson. The maximum cut it can do would be a stack of paper 4.25 inches high and about 31 inches wide...
...with an accuracy down to .001"
Here we see the cutter in action where the ends of the original manual were just shaved a little to give them them a crisp new edge. The wide white pieces of paper are the added end papers and dedication page.
With the manual now rebound and cut to size the spine needed to be rounded over. This process was started using this special hammer.
This is what the spine will look like when rounded over and the crease in the cover by Chris' thumb is called a
French Curve.
That
French Curve is important in a shop to allow the cover to lay open as shown on a bench while referencing the manual.
Also by using an open spine as seen, with the cover open all the way it won't damage the spine. Gus will like that.
That's the end of
Part I.
Check back to see if poor Gus will ever be reunited with his beloved Mechanic's Manual. Will we misspell Toledo on the new hard cover, will animal glue really stick or is that just a rumor and can a
"Smooth All" be used to polish gold leaf. All this and more is coming up in the next exciting post. Don't miss it!
Thomas
I almost couldn't bare to watch. And all along I thought he never cut corners in his work. 
So when you turn in to sleep, I imagine it's a 10 minute power nap, then you wake back up completely refreshed 
