Wooden Book Cover

Intro: Wooden Book Cover

So recently my friend has gotten me a notebook with a cover that wasn't as appealing to me. Instead of being a jerk and getting a new book, I decided to create a new book cover for the book. After thinking about various book covers, I decided that the best course of action would be to make a book cover out of wood.

Materials needed:
- 1/8 inch sheet plywood
- old notebook (could buy new, but who wants to spend money?)
- glue (preferably craft glue)
- laser cutter
-computer (for the design and cutting)
-heat gun

STEP 1: Design

First i gutted pages from the book cover. Then I hopped onto libre office draw (one of the many laser cutting softwares I'm comfortable with) and I drew living hinges.

Living hinges are little slits in wood or cardboard that allow it to bend without the use of adding actual hinges. I created different test hinges to see which best fit the book pages.

STEP 2: More Laser Cutting + Bending Cover

After I found the best hinge (not shown), I stacked them to the hight of the original book cover and added rectangles for the front and back of the cover. With the file made, I sent them to the laser cutter to cut.

After the cover was cut, I noticed that it naturally stayed in an open position. To get it to close naturally, I soaked the hinge in water for three minutes. Because I didn't want to bend the front and back cover as well, I applied wet towels over the hinge itself. Once three minutes passed, I bent the book to where it stayed closed and applied heat to it via heat gun so that it stayed in that position

STEP 3: Fitting and Glueing

Now all thats left is to glue the cover to the book. Being that this was the first ever book cover I made, I didn't know the best way to glue it. I do plan to learn a better method and put it on an updated instructable.

Comments

[mr_riess]

This looks great, do you have the cut file you used for this?

[ArgusVlinder]

Hi, Naeem, did you ever find a way to attach the book into the wooden cover in a nice way? I want to make a numer of books. All with a wooden cover. See a lot of tutorials on making the cover or binding a book but none on combining these techniques. Thanks for your reaction.

[KevinKarney]

Great Idea!

[nemodude]

And thank you for the recomendation dankozi713

[nemodude]

From what I know, the hinge works best when you laser cut along the wood gradient for it naturally bends that way. However I know that by wetting the hinge in that one step above, It reduced the chance of it snapping while bent. So for now, it should survive for a long while. Laser Cutting it does make it weaker, but not too weak that it will always break, and it also depends on the hinge pattern/ how think you make each bend line.

[Dankozi713]

You might be able to get an idea of how to glue it from Jimmy Diresta's YouTube vid on book binding. That dude rules!!

[gravityisweak]

Very nice. How do you think the hinge will hold up to years of opening and closing? Does laser cutting a hinge in this way eventually wear down the hinge?

[nemodude]

Agreed