The Last of the Mohicans printed by James B. Lyon

This is The Last of the Mohicans printed by James B. Lyon. It doesn't have a date on it, so I don't know exactly when it was published. But based on what kind of paper used and the era when James B. Lyon was active, I'd suspect it was sometimes around 1850's~70's. But, boy, this book's been giving me a bit of a headache. It's one of those books that has severely acidified pages. Paper crumbles with the slightest touch. ( Have you seen and touched a newspaper paper from 1920's or something? The paper of this book is just like that, or worse.. the acid used to refine the wood pulp eats up the structure of the grain of paper over time, and turns it into dust.) So, cleaning the spine was a nightmare. It took longer than I expect because I had to be really careful not to take the pieces of paper with the glue residue I was trying to take off. Of course I couldn't use any moisture to soften the glue because of the condition of the paper. When I saw the spine, I thought it was going to be super easy to take the old glue off, but it turned out to be NOT!! ( I thought it would even come off with a light brush with my fingers without problem. It did come off, but it came off with a chunk of paper with it. Ah!) Anyway, The troublesome parts of the restoration is done, and I fixed the corners and created a facsimile skiver (the original skiver was missing pieces as shown on the picture.) I'll be re-hinging it tonight. Whew, I need a massage!

// For the completed work of this book, go to my latter post: The Last of the Mohicans complete