Book-case for tablet/e-reader
Saturday 23 June 2012 at 1:29 pmI am the (proud) owner of the world's crappiest Android tablet, a Scroll 7" with resistive screen. Most of it doesn't work, since I rooted it and stripped out all but the most basic of its functions to try and increase battery life. I now use it for 2 things - reading ebooks and occasionally watching movies (ripped from DVD to AVI format) in bed. I'd considered a Kindle but the lack of a backlight makes it useless for bedtime reading.
So what better case for an ebook reader than an actual book? There are lots of different instructions on the internet, so I basically followed one like this on instructables, using some good-quality PVA glue (diluted) and a makeshift clamp/press made from 2 blocks of timber and some nuts & bolts. Basically keep a few pages at the front, protect the front cover and these pages with plastic & masking tape, then brush the PVA mixture into the page edges. Clamp and leave to dry. Then get a nice sharp blade - I used a Stanley knife with a new blade - and cut out your rectangle. I did try drilling out the corners for a smooth finish but it made more mess than it saved.
Once cut to size (I had to allow a cutout for the side buttons and a finger recess for pulling the tablet out), brush on more PVA, clamp and dry. With good-quality PVA it dries really nice & solid, so much so that I could sand the inside to fit using a Dremel-type mini drum sander. To finish you can put back some of the first pages you retained and carefully cut out the aperture to give a nice finish.
Of course, when you have the world's crappiest tablet there's not a huge amount of point in trying to protect it, but I'd always wanted to do a hollow book project. Plus it was a really dull book!
Pics:
UPDATE - I've got a new, smaller tablet with a new book-case project. Here.
