Book Safe

It has been a while since I've posted something not computer related: well, here you go! Have you ever wanted a book with a hollow middle you can hide things in? Well, I did. Anyhow, the computer science department at the university I attend gets rid of old books by laying them on a table outside the office; most are hard-covers from earlier days. I picked up one on electrical and electronic engineering, to my dismay when I got home I found it to be filled to the brim with calculus. For that reason, I didn't feel bad at all cutting it up.


Time for the recipe:

Materials:

• Hard cover book.
• Craft Knife
• Saw
• Glue
• Tape
• Clamp (optional)
• Felt (optional)

Methods:

1. Slice out the inside of the book by running a craft knife along the page that connects the inside to the spine on both the front and back covers, this will leave both the spine and inside pages intact.
2. Starting from the binding use the saw to slice down the sides of the internal pages of the book about an inch from the edges, until you are about an inch away from the side opposite the binding. I found a clamp helpful in keeping the book still.

   

   Finished Sawing, Use the craft knife to cut the rest.

   
   

   
   

   

   Clamping The Book For Sawing
   
   

3. Using the craft knife, cut through the remaining pages along the outside of the book a few at a time, discarding them as you go to make a U shaped piece of paper.
4. Finally, glue the spine back in to the cover of the book, and one side of the insert to the cover; spread glue over the inside of the pages to keep them joined, or use tape. If you really want, once the glue has been spread use felt to line it.

   

   Nearly Done!

I won't show you the cover, because then you would know which book it is!

You could potentially put a fake cover on this, something insane and boring, like "Multi-variable Calculus Pertaining to Optimal Cement Mixing" then stick it in the proper place in your library; a kind of cache for you. Anybody really interested in cement mixing will pass right over it knowing it is rubbish, while anybody new to the subject will go pale at the thought of doing calculus for such a seemingly simple problem.