So, I've been at my mother's home for a while with relatively little to do. Not long after I arrived, my mother mentioned that she wanted to make a table from a bunch of old books that she was otherwise going to discard from her library (for those unaware, my mother is a high school librarian). After a bit of consideration, I came up with a plan that led to the table you see above.

The legs of the table were made by drilling 7/16 inch holes through the center of each book. The books themselves were then stacked together on a 36 inch long, 3/8 inch diameter bolt The bottom book of each stack was then specifically choosen to be especially thick. This book was then screwed shut (possibly into another adjacent book), and the counter-sunk using a 1 and 1/4 inch panel bit. The counter sink easily covered up the nut and washer placed on each side. The screws helped these bottom books maintain uprightness when their integrity was otherwise compromised by the countersink.

Drilling the books was accomplished via clamping them to a piece of scrap MDF and then drilling through. The clamping was done soas to provide something to drill against and to create better exit holes on the books. My brother and I accomplished the drilling over the course of several sessions wherein he setup books to drill and I drilled them. Using multiple clamps and setups allowed us to drill several books per minute.

The top of the table consists of 28 books from a particular set of books (what set, I have no idea). All of the books were placed onto a piece of 49 inch by 39 inch piece of MDF (that luckily had already been cut to size and was a leftover of my rackmount case project from college. Each book is screwed in place with four 1" screws. The corner books are special due to the fact that they have to support the legs. These books, after been screwed down, had holes drilled at about center through the book and MDF. After the holes were drilled, I used the 1 and 1/4 inch panel bit to countersink through most of the book so that I would have a place to hide the other set of nuts and screws. All of the holes and drilled screws in the top of the table were made with the corresponding books open so as to leave the faces undisturbed.

Assembling the table was done after the legs and top were otherwise finished and was accomplished by only myself and my mother. It only took a few minutes, but we did have to remove and replace a few books due to slight misjudgements of the amount of space needed at the top. Now that it has been completed it will probably sit where it is until my mother changes schools (ACSC is undergoing some sort of reorganization).

Additional photos are on my flickr page and show the insides of a couple of the top books to show the construction as well as the table and legs from various angles.

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