Spent New Year's Eve finishing up this paperback rescue. It was my first time binding something that wasn't sewn, so the skepticism was strong, but so far things are holding up alright. Here is the end result (and more photos below):
This was a a friend's well used paperback that was already coming apart at the spine, so I separated all the pages and tried a double fan binding with cords. Sawing into the text block to make grooves was fun.
I thought about reusing the cover art, which included many angry men on horses, but the only portion that wasn't very scratched up was the title block, so I only cut that portion out from the original cover. Then used some thin card stock for endpapers. New find: a cloth waxing strip is a great substitute for mull.
Casing in was a little tight because I cut the boards a couple of mm short, but I think it will be okay. The text block is still off the ground. I used homemade bookcloth on the cover spine and world map craft paper for the rest of the cover.
A note on headbands: I didn't use them. I usually sew them on and so only have thread to do it, but I can't sew into paperbacks since there are no folder signatures to poke through. I could have bought glue on headbands, but I just didn't want to, and they wouldn't have added any support to the book anyways.