Tablet Cover From Old Hardcover Books

Here’s a way to look hip and destroy books at the same time. This table cover is made from an old hardcover book. It’s not difficult to do, an afternoon is all it takes, and if you follow all of the instructions we’d bet this will hold up for a long time.

It’s basically another version of the Moleskine cover for the Kindle Fire. You find a donor book (second-hand shops are packed with ’em) with a hardcover which you really enjoy. Kids books would be the most fun because of the artwork – if you can find one thick enough. With book in hand remove all of the pages. This will leave the binding a little flimsy, and since this is a project by the company which make Sugru, you can see why they used the moldable adhesive for that purpose. But check out the brackets in the picture above. They covered the Kindle in cling wrap, then molded Sugru around the corners. Once set, it can be peeled away from the plastic wrap, but will retain its shape. Nice.

17 thoughts on “Tablet Cover From Old Hardcover Books

  1. Nice but I’ed go the booksafe root, hollow out the pages for a hole for the reader, some elastic at the four corners to hold the reader and bob’s your uncle. Hey if the book is thick enough you could even have a hollowed out space for a USB cable and if its wide enough you could put in magnets for a magnetic clouser.

  2. Nice! To strengthen the corners of that sugru, I’d maybe try using a paperclip as the core, and mold the sugru around the paperclip in the same shape as shown above.
    Note that I haven’t tried it, but I think that should contribute to a stronger holding clip.

  3. I applaud you Mike. In the link to the Moleskine cover you spelled it “table cover” and then you repeated it here. I assume this is intentional and you’re thumbing your nose to those who complained about the last post. Keep posting things like this.

    1. I’m guessing that was sarcasm, you can’t really be on this site without knowing what sugru is. How would you bind the velcro to the e-reader though, because the point is that this is removable, and easy to put back on, that’s why they used sugru.

  4. … or you could make a copy of the book cover, i.e. scan or download and print a photo of your favourite book cover, laminate or stick it to some coloured thick card, and save a genuine book from being destroyed and lost to future generations.

    This would allow you to scale some classy examples to fit the kindle, or even create your own versions of the classic, think “Penguin Classics” with added Tux…

    1. I TOTALLY agree with you on this. Why destroy a book just to have a cool cover?

      What someone should do is make a cover that is a good simulation of an old book, not the plastic crap out there now.

  5. I dont like those kinds of covers, they ruin the portability and easy to hold characteristics of the tablets.

    That said, someone out there was doing old leather bound electrical textbooks as ipad covers and they were works of art.

  6. I was going to say; that is one small table cover. Maybe instead of destroying those books, you should actually read them. Why does it seem like every story on H.A.D. was edited by… NO ONE.

  7. It seems to me this could be combined with a tablet that has a camera, and then it would read a QR or bar code and automatically load the book that is in the library of books, so you could have lots of different covers and they would make the e-reader into that book.

    Just a neat thought.

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