How I made a hollowed book

Sometimes the stars align and something perfect results with hardly any planning.  In particular, sometimes one develops a need to create a hollowed out book.  You know.  For sneaky reasons.  Nothing beyond the need for a book is in your mind, but then when you turn up at a local Chapters to browse the fine literature, all the puzzle pieces fall into place when you find this:

Really??? "How to decipher mystical motifs - and know where to find them"??? What bliss! It's like someone wrote the cover of this book just begging for it to be made into...  ahem.  I think I skipped around the store with this book in my hands, I was so happy.  It's... just... so... perfect.

I bought it, brought it home, browsed through the poor little guy... but as you can see, this book was doomed to be disemboweled.

Note: I am normally very pro-book.  I am against book abuse.  I sign the petitions.  I go to the rallies.  Despite my tablet, I still buy books.  But this one had to be sacrificed to the letterboxing gods.  It's for the greater good.  I swear.  Man, do I feel guilty.

Anyways, I looked up some instructions online for the hows of creating a hollowed out book.  I'm not going to list all the steps here, but I'll link to the instructions I used:  I first found a webpage called, "How to Hollow out a Book in 80 Easy Steps".  Wow, 80 steps?  But then I found, "How to Make a Hollow Book: 13 steps (with pictures)".  13 sounds easier than 80.  But they were both great.  So I followed them both.  I'm a hussy like that.

Anyways, here is the photographic journey in making my first hollowed out book.  I'm proud to say that neither I nor my feline assistant were injured in the making of this project.  Happy trails!

Okay, so generally speaking, I first cut out the prettiest page.  This will be the back of the hollow with this is done.

A couple pages over that will be kept and not hollowed.

On the other side of those pages, tape in some plastic to protect them from glue.  I used those crappy ziplocks someone left instead of my freezer bags... *shakes fist*

Glue and water, 70% and 30% respectively.

I glued the edges together and then put it under this kettle bell for about 30 minutes.  Can you believe people use those for exercise?

Okay, so after it was dry, I carefully measured out some margins and made my first cut.  Slowly

But as time went on, I just got tired of all the cutting and tried to speed it up.  Some crappy edges are the result.

Done!  Now just to glue that pretty page into the back.

Glued the interior edges then put it all together to dry.

Done! I can't wait to get up to some mischief with this...