The plastic has been removed and the paper repairs are underway. Still to be done are cleaning the surface, completing the paper repairs and in-painting the missing areas of the image.

This is the second part of a dust jacket restoration (see part one here) where I am removing a torn, wrinkled heat set plastic covering the entire front and rear panels as well as most of the flaps. While the dust jacket looks like it has seen better days, fortunately, the actual damage, in addition to the plastic covering, consisted of only a few minor paper losses, some scuffing to the image, a bit of scotch tape and some short tears. I spent the better part of a week on and off removing the plastic. Periodically, I would heat up and remove a section of plastic and then set it aside to work on something else. This way I kept my attention sharp.

Finally, I got all the plastic off of the whole thing. After a light cleaning, there was a bit of a remaining residue that just left a slight hazing over the panels. It was not too bad and I decided to leave it alone. To try to remove it would have been even more money for the client

This is the part I love the best–in-painting the repairs to fill in the missing image.

and the outcome was iffy. To complete the dust jacket restoration, the work left to do now was paper repair and in-painting the missing artwork. I love this part! Any painting is icing on the cake.

I had already repaired a lot of the tears and holes. I used Japanese tissue on the back adhered with a wheat starch paste that we cook up in the shop. On the front I use a heavier Japanese tissue to fill in the missing paper. The tissue is built up in layers to equal the thickness of the original dust jacket paper while the edges are wet-torn to match the contours of the edge of the loss, all which aids in blending the new and old materials in a discrete way. You can see on the picture there was not a ton of repairs.

Finally, I in-painted all the missing drawing on the new material I added and of the scuffed areas. You can see the final, successful dust jacket restoration in the last picture. What a cool drawing for a dust jacket! This was a new experience for me. I never had to deal with a plastic coated page. What is next????

The completed dust jacket restoration, ready to be returned to its owner.