Spell Books.

This article is adapted in part from an article in Adventurer #29 By Dave Reynolds.

There are 2 ways of making spell books. The first is very simple and quick and involves covering a note book in leather, the second takes a bit longer but will give a much nicer finished book.

Method 1 - Covering a note book.

Materials.

Hard Backed Note Book.
Soft Thin Leather.

Cover the note book in the leather making sure that you fold the leather over all the edges. To finish off simply glue the first and last page of the note book to the covers to cover the edges of the leather.

Method 2 - Making the book from scratch.

Materials

Stiff Card (The Back of A4 Pads is Good).
Soft Thin Leather.
Black Thread.
Thick A4 Paper. (If you are in the US and can only get 8.5 X 11 paper you might need to alter the size of the book slightly to make the pages fit.)
A Tea Bag.

Firstly drop the tea bag into a cup of hot water.

Cut out the card as shown and glue it to the Leather being sure to leave the 6 mm gap between the pieces to allow the book to close.

Next glue a second piece of leather to the card so that the card is sandwiched between the two. the best way to do this is to glue the second piece of leather to the spine and then close the book before gluing the leather to the front and back cover. This means that the book will tend to close better once it is finished.

Now trim the leather covers to within about 2-3 mm of the card. This allows the leather covers to be stitched around the edge for an authentic look and covers up the fact that the whole thing is actually glued together.

To make the pages take 3 sheets of a A4. Go back to the cup of tea you made at the start which should be nice and cold by now and use the tea bag to stain the pages brown. Dry them gently between two layers of towel and leave them on the radiator to dry fully.

Tear each of the pages into quarters using a ruler (it gives a nice uncut edge) so you have 12 pieces of about equal size. Put them together and fold them once width ways. Now stitch the pages together as shown.

Finally glue a thin strip of leather to the bound pages (about 0.5 cm X 10 cm) and glue this into the book.

Larger books can be made simply by altering the dimensions and not tearing the A4 sheets as much to form the pages. If you are making a different sized book it is a good idea to make the pages first and then make a cover that will fit them.