How to fix a damaged book?

[Crater Eddie]

I got a great deal on this used book, but the poor condition of the cover bugs me. Is there a way to fix the cover binding so it doesn't eventually fall off? Any way to remove those stickers without damaging the cover? The back cover has twice as many stickers as the front.

[Peter]

Hi Crater Eddie,
I would use. De solv it, artificial orange oil, to remove the sticky labels (test it on the ones on the back cover first ).
My suggestion for fixing the front cover is to carefully remove the spiral then fix the torn edge back as well as you can, perhaps using Sellotape, then laminate the cover. Trim the lamination as close to the edge of the cover as possible. Re-punch the holes and re-insert the spiral.
Hope this helps.
Peter.

[Crater Eddie]

Some carefully applied lighter fluid (naptha) softened the stickers enough that they peeled right off without any damage to the cover.
Your suggestion, Peter, is the best one I have seen so far for repairing the binding.

[75RR]

Hi Eddie,
You may want to replace the thin metal spiral with a thicker rounded plastic one. They are kinder on the holes.

[microgreen]

I agree with Peter - clean up the covers and laminate them.Remove the spiral from the pages and dispose of it.
Get a ring binder(the kind with two split rings - some have four - for holding the pages)
You may be lucky and find you can line up existing holes in the pages with the rings
Of course you will have to punch holes in the covers
Tony
East Riding of Yorkshire(UK)

[Crater Eddie]

Update:

I cleaned up the covers very nicely with lighter fluid then took the book to Staples (office supply store in the US). They quoted me under $10 to laminate the covers and put in a new plastic spiral.
That sounded good to me, so I gave them the Go-Ahead.
2 hours later I got a call from them, seems there was a problem. After they trimmed the old holes off the covers and laminated them, they discovered that the hole pattern in the book didn't match the hole pattern their machine cuts, the pitch was off just enough that the new spiral would not go in. Notice they only discovered this problem AFTER they had cut the covers off, laminated them and cut new holes (just in the covers). They wanted my permission to trim the book pages and punch new holes in all the pages, the problem with that was the text is already close to the original holes, trimming the pages and punching new holes would result in the loss of the near edges of the text. I had to point out why this was unacceptable... glad they asked before doing this at least. After much study, I sat down with a marker and tagged the holes in the covers that do line up with the original holes on the pages, and told them to trim away the interfering areas between the few matching holes in the covers then insert the new spiral. I also insisted on a bigger spiral that they had selected.
So I came back another 2 hours later and they had it finished. They had assembled the book with the front cover set about 3/4 of an inch lower than the body of the book. By this time I was not a happy customer at all. They gave me the book at no charge and I hurried out of there before they could do any more damage. Back home I disassembled the book, trimmed off the razor sharp corners of the laminate, cleaned up some of the ragged cuts left between the remaining functional holes, then re-assembled the book so the covers matched the body.
The end result is a functional book, but I had to do half the work myself. I will not return to this Staples for any more book binding work.

[Mintaka]

Glad it turned out OK in the end after all the trouble. At the very least, you now have a book with a good story behind it.

[Crater Eddie]

I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that story! It was almost worth the aggravation just to have that to tell.

CE

[JimT]

You should write a book

[Crater Eddie]

It looks pretty good, if you don't look too close. This is after I cleaned it up.
Oh well, it is usable, and that's what counts.

[Mintaka]

Thats good as new, man! I would've settled for a lot less.