Hi evilrooster, and welcome to Mobileread!
I can see your point about Torie and PNH acting as moderators of an online community, rather than as official representatives of Tor publishing (though I think that connection is inescapable in situations like this). But I am one of the moderators here at Mobileread, and I have to say that PNH's reply (saying that he and his associates laughed at someone for being upset that additional ebooks were not in the offing from tor.com) really didn't fit with my perception of him prior to this kerfluffle. It was disappointing, to say the least. As a forum moderator, it's not something I would have done, because I can hardly see that it could help the tone of the discussion.
Then again, moderators are human too, and I've had times when I've been quite taken aback by something someone posted, and not known how to respond. And certainly there have been times when my online (or in-person) communications haven't been quite as polished or professional as I would like.
Now, leaving this unpleasantness aside for a moment, we've had a couple of threads here at MR about creating cases for ebook readers made from old books or from many other sorts of found materials (and yvanleterrible has some lovely pictures of his handmade wooden cases), and we've even had a thread about creating a "steampunk" surface treatment on a reader, but I don't think anyone has started a thread about using traditional bookbinding techniques to construct a new case. I think you'd get a lot of interest in a thread like that. I know I'd like to participate! My bookbinding skills are very amateur at best, but it sounds like a fascinating idea.