One of the most fun things that I have been recently making are items that enhance or go along with playing tabletop games. One idea I found online recently that I wanted to try out for myself is a book vault to hold a set of dice and double as a rolling box. Luckily, I had all of the materials ready – ModPodge and hobby knifes from making terrain and a set of old books I hoped to cut up in the future to make a functional Myst Linking Book.
There are many different ways that you can make one of these book vaults and mine is an amalgamation of several I found online. Overall, I was very happy with the result vs how much time it took (several hours of worktime, not including drying time). I started by slathering Mod Podge on all three sides of the book with the cover open to seal all of the pages together. Note: I realized after I did this that I wanted to add magnets to close it, and should have left the front several pages unglued as well to have a cleaner way to hide the magnets. I layered some parchment paper in between the cover and the book and weighed it down to dry.
Once the glue has set, I carefully mark out the rectangle that will be cut out on the inside cover. I leave about an inch of margin to provide plenty of support for the walls.
Using a ruler as a guide, I cut along the rectangle, easily cutting out several pages at a time. Once they are removed, I used the new walls to continue to cut out the rectangle deeper. With a sharp blade I was able to cut through many pages at a time, though I had to take particular care with corners so they come out cleanly.
It takes a lot of time and careful cutting, and progress was made slowly.
The whole being a dice box, I continued to cut until the box could comfortably hold some dice.
Once a substantial amount has been cut into the book, the interior walls are very loose, since the glue did not get into the interior of the book. To make them a little more stable, I coated the interior walls with Mod Podge and weighed it down again.
Once I finished with the compartment, I realized I wanted some magnets to keep it closed while I move it around, else the dice were very prone to fall out. So I used a hobby knife to carefully carve two small squares into the pages deep enough to hold a small magnet.
I superglue a magnet into each hole and carefully glue the top page scraps back in to cover it. For the opposing iron seal, I super glued two small washers opposite the magnets on the cover and covered them with some of the interior cover scraps that I discarded from cutting the compartment. It turned out functional, but could be made to look a lot nicer if I planed to do so from the beginning.
The complete book!
While it took a lot of slicing to get the whole thing cut out, it overall came out a very nice looking, functional compartment book for a few afternoon’s worth of work. I hope to make some more of these in the future that can hold some notepads and maybe minis for the rest in my tabletop group.
Seritech Workbench 