ABSTRACT
Dry-cleaning is frequently necessary with old books, but it must be done with extreme care. Double leaves may then be blotted off, and hung up to dry on a line when practicable, while single leaves may be laid flat on a hard paper and occasionally turned over whilst drying. The surplus size is squeezed out while the book is in a vertical position, a receptacle being placed under the press to receive the waste size. A more ready method is to pass the sheet through a bath of hot water, to which has been added a little chloride of lime in solution. The size bath is just warm and the sheets are left in sufficiently long to enable the size to work itself well into the paper. The process of washing will have removed a large amount of the original size from the paper, so the paper has to be resized and toned back to its original colour.
