Repairing old gaming books

Minor restoration process.

I recently got hold of some Starguard books from 1975(?)ish. Typical of the period they are made from fairly cheap paper with coloured light card as covers. So after nearly fifty years they'd both got a bit dirty with some damage caused by light and they are all a bit loose around the staples. There's not a lot to be done with light damage but on the upside, the dirt doesn't look like grease and the staples haven't rusted too badly

Here is a closer look .  

Here's what I did in order:  

1. Popped them in freezer bags and frozen them for a while. Later I was told my freezer isn't cold enough to kill all the bacteria which was the point of the freezing so, mah.  

2. Brushed the book down with a soft paint brush to remove surface crud.  

3. Carefully removed the staples with a palette knife. I couldn't find my small one so ended up using a cake making one- worked fine!  

4. I took all of the pages out and brushed them down too, especially near the staple fold.  

5. Using a putty rubber (eraser) I carefully and slowly, began removing the dirt on the cover. A putty rubber is good because you can mould it into different shapes to get at difficult areas. I found a stipple action worked well. I had to be very careful along the spine fold as the card was deteriorating.  

6. I reversed the cover and used document repair tape (sometimes sold as Librarian's Tape) to reinforce the spine. This tape is acid free and doesn't go brittle with age and the light. It's got a thin strip down the middle so that when you have removed the backing, you can see through the tape and place it very accurately. Once that's done you remove the backing from each side (one at a time) and press down with the palette knife to get rid of wrinkles or bubbles.  

7. I did the same with the centre pages of the booklet because it was here where the staples had caused small tears.  

8. I then used a WHITE plastic eraser (not a cheapo one nor a coloured one) to clean the larger areas of the cover.  

9. Finally I reassembled the booklet and restapled it with my long arm stapler.

It's not perfect. Some discolouration is impossible to fix. However, they are much better than before and I'm not longer worried about the covers coming off during use.