Leg of Books

Step 3 Drill Baby Drill

We need to drill two holes through the book, and you could do as much layout as you like at this point depending on how you want your finished column to look.  We wanted out column of books to be a little irregular as they stacked up, not perfectly straight, so I didn't do any measuring to locate the first hole, I just aimed for roughly centered and about 1/3 down from the top of the front face of the book.  We are going to drill two holes through the book eventually, but I went through all the books with one hole first.

I clamped a scrap of plywood to the table of my drill press to give me something to drill into when I got through the book, and also support the back of the book a best as possible.

I experimented with several different drill  bits, and finally settled on using the forstner bit.  One of the big challenges is that the waste from the drilling does not easily come back out the drilled hole, but instead wedges between the pages, increasing the thickness of the book as you drill.  I had pretty fair success with holding the book tightly, but it was even easier after I enlisted some help to hold the book down tightly.  I also backed out of the cut frequently which seemed to help.  You could also use a clamp, but with so many books, all different thicknesses, clamping was just a little too much effort for me.