Fixing a Book with Duct Tape

As many know, duct tape is used for more than just pencil cases, which is what I have mostly used duct tape for.  Duct tape serves a useful purpose, such as fixing car windows, which I see all the time on the road.  It can also be used to fix the binding on a book and to reattach the covers to the book.

The big dictionary in the house has had a ripped cover and binding for years.  Nobody has sought to fix it, but since I had red duct tape that matched the color of the dictionary, I thought that this was a perfect opportunity to reconstruct the spine.

Starting condition

I first needed to fix the spine, which, as seen in the pictures, was ripped and half-missing.  I removed the front and back covers from the dictionary and began working on the back cover.

I taped what was left of the spine and the back cover together on the back and the front.

To recreate the missing part of the spine, I alternated between putting pieces of duct tape on the inside of the spine and on the outside of the spine until I reached the end.  I also taped up the rip on the top of the spine between the two remaining pieces of the spine.

To connect the front cover with the spine, I just taped them together, both on the inside and the outside.

Two covers attached together

Inside view in between the two covers

I put a piece of tape horizontally along the bottom edge of the spine, which is the portion of the spine that I reconstructed with duct tape.

Bottom half

Front and back cover with no pages

To reattach the pages, I placed the back cover underneath the bound pages and taped them together.

Starting to bind the pages to the cover

I repeated the same process at the front of the book, binding the insides together.  I placed a piece of duct tape on the other side of the where I joined the pages and the cover together at both the front and the back of the dictionary.

Tape between the pages and the cover to hold them together

After attaching the cover to the spine, I finished the reconstruction of a book spine and the attachment of the hardcovers to the pages.  The dictionary, I must say, looks so much better than before.