A Book Table: Literally

Okay - one thing you all should know about me is that I am a bibliophile. I love books. When I decided to make this project. I challenged myself to go through the books I own to do it rather than go to a thrift store. I figured it would make my husband happy.

It is pretty cool to me to realize that everything I used for this project is stuff I had on hand and all the main components were from thrift stores. 

What You Need

Enough books to make the height of your table.
A checkerboard or some other piece of wood to use as the table surface.
Gorilla Glue
Stick glue
A drill along with drill bits for wood and hole cutters for wood
A Dremel
A threaded rod (mine came from a lamp but you can buy them at hardware stores as well).
Washers and nuts to fit the rod

Instructions

Drill holes through the middle of each book. The holes need to be wide enough for the rod to pass through easily but not too wide (the purpose of the rod is to help stabilize the stack).

Paper is messy and will bunch up. So after you drill through all the books you will find it necessary to go through and find where the pages buched up or burred and smooth them down using the Dremel.

Use the hole cutter to cut a wider hole in the bottom book just deep enough to accomodate the nut and washer. Do the same for the top book.

Practice stacking all the books on the rod. The books need to come to about half an inch above the top of the rod when you press down with all your weight.

At this point it is helpful to stack the books onto the rod and put some heavy weight on top of them (I used three paving stones I bought for a planter project) and let them rest for several days. This will help the book pages to compact together the way they were before you drilled them.

Take your stack apart one last time.

Use a glue stick to glue the pages of the top and bottom book together (so that they won't flop open - which they will do if you don't glue them because of the hole created for the nut and washers).

Build the stack one book at time using Gorilla Glue between each book until your stack is about half way up the rod. Stack the rest of the books on top of the stack without gluing and let the glue on the bottom books firm up.

Finish gluing the stack and add the nut and bolt to the top. Make sure it is tightened securely then add glue to the bottom of your table top and flip the stack over onto the table top. Add a few more weights to the top and then let the whole stack dry completely.

When it is all dry, you will have a neat little table.

I will be sharing this at::