what to do with 1960 Encyclopedia

[jhgrady]

Sounds like a job for your Multifunction Power Tool.

John
______________________

http://www.harborfreight.com/power-t...ool-67256.html

[Chris_B]

any one have a better suggestion?

I frequently cut the bindings from books to scan them as PDF files for my Kindle, and have tried all sorts of schemes (with a variety of clamping approaches):

• Table saw
• Miter Saw
• Fein Multi-master
• Bandsaw
• Your crazy idea here...

All of these leave rough or torn edges that are difficult to clean-up and impossible to reliably fit through a scanner.

The winner is a good straight edge (e.g., aluminum angle bar) for the initial passes, and a fresh bi-metal box-cutter blade. Just be sure to hold the knife at 90 degrees, and do *NOT* try to cut too much on each pass.

This should work equally well for cutting a rectangle. Patience is key. When I press too hard, the blade bends, and the cuts wander.

[sparkeyjames]

I frequently cut the bindings from books to scan them as PDF files for my Kindle, and have tried all sorts of schemes (with a variety of clamping approaches):

• Table saw
• Miter Saw
• Fein Multi-master
• Bandsaw
• Your crazy idea here...

All of these leave rough or torn edges that are difficult to clean-up and impossible to reliably fit through a scanner.

The winner is a good straight edge (e.g., aluminum angle bar) for the initial passes, and a fresh bi-metal box-cutter blade. Just be sure to hold the knife at 90 degrees, and do *NOT* try to cut too much on each pass.

This should work equally well for cutting a rectangle. Patience is key. When I press too hard, the blade bends, and the cuts wander.

Have you ever tried taking the books to your local print shop. They have these things called paper cutters. They cut through paper like a hot knife goes through butter. Just make sure there isn't any metal in the book or binding. The one we have where I work can cut through a 36" wide 4.5" high stack of any type of paper in a hair under 1 second and with a freshly sharpened blade it doesn't even slow down. The old Ted Nugent phrase "whack um' and stack um'" has a whole different meaning where I work.

[frumper64]

Loring, do they have Half Price Book stores down in the Houston area? We have several in the DFW area and they buy things like this. I asked them why and they said they sold "books by the foot" to builders for model homes and so on. You probably wouldn't get much, but it couldn't hurt to ask

[Chris_B]

Have you ever tried taking the books to your local print shop. They have these things called paper cutters.

No, but I considered it, and am familiar with industrial-strength cutters - though obviously not as familiar as you!

If I could not have figured out an easy way to do this at home, I might have gone this route, though I wonder if it would be cost-effective. I usually only 'trim' one book at a time, and I doubt that a shop would let me have access to their giant paper cutters for free.

[LCHIEN]

Thanks guys, but all these paper cutter, bands saws table saws ideas are forgetting the purpose - to cut a inside square hole , not to cut the book in two. That would be relatively easy. The box knife, is good for 10 pages at a time, not 2-400 at a pass.

One thing would be to dip the pages en masse in a weak glue solution, holdiing the covers open and above. Then put it in a press and let the glue set making the pages become a solid mass. Then easy to cut. But, the pages would all expand and I'd probably not get the covers back parallel.

[Uncle Cracker]

Thanks guys, but all these paper cutter, bands saws table saws ideas are forgetting the purpose - to cut a inside square hole , not to cut the book in two. That would be relatively easy. The box knife, is good for 10 pages at a time, not 2-400 at a pass.

One thing would be to dip the pages en masse in a weak glue solution, holdiing the covers open and above. Then put it in a press and let the glue set making the pages become a solid mass. Then easy to cut. But, the pages would all expand and I'd probably not get the covers back parallel.

Get a trash book to use as a "guinea pig" and try the router... They really do use drill bits to "hole punch" in bulk quantities, so maybe this would actually work.

[cabinetman]

If you can remove the cover so you have access to just the pages, you can drill in bulk. You need to clamp a top and bottom piece of fairly thick plywood (3/4") so that it can compress the paper very tight.

I haven't tried a jigsaw in cutting paper like this, but a metal cutting blade would likely work best.
.

[Daryl]

We had a set of World Book encyclopedia of about the same vintage. I spent a lot of evenings reading thru them.
Have you considered giving them to a nursing home or retirement center?

Just a note, to drill paper you need to use a hollow bit, and make allowance for the chips to go someplace.

[Stytooner]

http://www.alpharubicon.com/prepinfo...booksaferh.htm

[Norm in Fujino]

I have a set of E. Britannica bought my first year of grad school ('77), plus one or two Japanese encyclopedias. I wish someone could use the Britannica, in particular, but in this day of the net and Wiki, who cares about the printed page anymore?

[gsmittle]

If we stack all the unwanted, no-longer-used paper encyclopedias in one place, we could probably get North America to flip over. Or the Earth would become unbalanced in its spin and fly out of orbit.

I'm thinking recycle if possible, outhouse if not.

g.

[dvan]

Try this link ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Invisible-Book-Shelf/ ) you have to be a member to get the PDF instructions but you can get the ideal from the instructions on the page. I am a book reader myself and I am still thinking about doing this but you need some old books you don’t read to make the shelf and I don’t have any old books to cut up. I thought it would be cool to do in a kids room or a bath room.

[LCHIEN]

i found if you google "hollow out book" there's a number of articles on how to do it, Wrap the front and rear covers and any pages you want to leave turnable covered with saran wrap. Use a slightly thinned (80% glue, 20% water) elmers or wood glue solution painted on the edges of the book, let dry, then use a exacto or box cutter with a straight edge to remove the area inside about 1/2" margin then you can glue the back of the book cover to the stack of pages. Maybe put velcro or magnets to hold the cover closed.

kind of time consuming at least a couple of hours per book. One suggested drilling the four corners makes cutting the inside easier because you don't have to make tight corners, and once you get down a fewpages, you don't need to use the straight edge anymore, the already cut pages on top guide you. Use the glue solution again to do the insides of the hollowed out section.

Funny reading the discussions of what books to pick...

Turns out you can buy old books from barnes and Noble for $10 already professionally hollowed out, sounds like its worth it to save the labor. They were shipping old copies of Ronnie and nancy.



Now, maybe I can hollow out some old CD or DVDs to hide things in??

[ironhat]

OTOH, you could tape it up, and shoot the crap out of it with varying calibers of firearms. Incredible how far a .223 will penetrate!