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Secret hollowed-out book tutorial

Mark Frauenfelder at 3:25 pm Wed, Oct 6, 2010

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My friend John Park wrote a tutorial on how to quickly make a hollowed-out book with an oscillating cutter.

Make a secret hollowed-out book

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • SnidelyWhiplash

    If you’re into making stuff, and you don’t have one of these tools already, get off yer arse and buy one. Hell, even if you don’t make stuff, buy one – they’re eminently useful. You can even get the cheap Harbor Freight model for around $30 – accepts most of the other companies’ attachments, too.

  • Stefan Jones

    Oh, come one! This is the 21st century. We want to see plans for a hollowed-out Kindle.

    • knoxblox

      But this is a much better idea in this day and age, where most teens regard books as a form of Kryptonite.

  • MarkM

    Note the prominent ads.
    Dremel® Multi-Max™ tool! Accept no substitute!
    It’s an tutorcial.

  • Roy Trumbull

    In the early days of TV when they wanted books in the background they took real books, removed the pages, and used thin plywood to hold the book shape. Thus they would have a set that wasn’t too heavy to move. Later some enterprising company made panels of fake book edges to accomplish the same thing with even less weight. Thus we have the impression that people on TV read books when all they really read is the teleprompter.

  • stringmonkey

    I wonder if I could bring myself to do that to a Clive Cussler novel.

  • Guesstimate Jones

    Does the oscillating tool make as clean a cut, as a hobby knife?

  • Crispinus211

    I love that it’s a Dan Brown novel — I don’t know if this is commented on in the tutorial, but it’s a pretty funny pic.

  • jpixl

    #3, no it’s not quite as clean, but it doesn’t look like I gnawed it out, either. I was concerned it might just chew up the paper, but it turned out well enough that I’d do it this way again. Much, much faster, too.
    #4 thanks for noticing!

  • Anonymous

    Reminds me of that scene in Shawshank Redemption, when they show where Andy Defrain was hiding his little rock pick.

  • shadowfirebird

    Lovely idea, but I have a problem.

    Can anyone out there help me work out what book I could use that would be so boring that none of my friends would ever pick it up and look in it?

    Maybe I have weird friends…

    • Antinous / Moderator

      http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Caesar-Sather-Classical-Lectures/dp/0520012577 works for me, even with grotesquely over-educated friends.

  • thequickbrownfox

    Knew this couple who were both junkies, they had their syringe located in a neatly hollowed-out section of a book, “The Secrets of Life and Death”.