Now that we have a baby, we have all kinds of
new literature,so to have a place to keep that,
I want to make a bookcase to go
right behind this chair.
I'm gonna make this bookcase out of some nice
oak veneered plywood. I found that
part of a bed frame next to a dumpster in a
townhouse complex.
Having cut the pieces to width, I now need to cut them
to length, and I'm employing a couple off tricks here.
The first trick is to make a backwards
scoring cut, so that way I avoid tear-out on the bottom
in the veneer.
And, the other trick I'm using is to put a board
in front of the fence and that allows me to
temporarily bypass the block that I'm using
as a length stop.
So, here's the shelves, and here's
the sides of the shelves. and to cover-up this
ugly edge, I'm gonna cut that from some trim
that also came from this bed frame.
Now I'll trim this trim flush with the surface
using a flush trim bit on the router.
I got the shelves and the sides, all trimmed.
And, now I want to put these together.
But, because these are already varnished,
I figure the best way to go about this is to
just put it together with a whole bunch of dowels,
like this one. Now this does require
drilling a whole bunch of holes into the ends of the shelves
which can be difficult.
What's useful is to use a doweling jig
like this one and then drill through the holes.
But, I'm gonna experiment with making a
one-time use doweling jig out of this piece of hardwood.
Well, so far this jig has worked out really well.
But, the real test comes when I put this thing together.
Hmm.
Well, I should have dry-fitted that joint.
Turns out my dowels were 1 millimeter too long,
so I had to work really fast,
no time to set-up the camera,
With one side of the shelf glued-up,
I now have to make all the boards
with the holes here. So, I have to glue
28 dowels together all at once.
So, I've got my clamps, and my mallet,
and everything ready, and I'm gonna start by
gluing all the dowels into here.
Oh boy. Here we go.
Oh, that was a very tense 8 minutes for me.
But, the joints are all closed now.
Tell you though, maybe just use pocket holes.
It's so much easier.
This is the bottom of the shelf, and my
original intention was to have it sit
on something like this, and then the base here.
But, then I realized that if I inset that
into a rabbet here, I won't have to hide
the end-grain of this.
And, I cut that rabbet with the pantorouter, just because
it was the most convenient for me.
I'm just nailing that on there, because it's on the
bottom of the shelf and nobody's going to see it.
And, here's the base for the shelf.
The main purpose of the base is to get
the shelf high enough so that it's up above the baseboard,
so I can push it all the way against the walls.
And, in the interest of getting it done quickly,
I'm actually using pocket holes to attach the base.
Yes, that's right. I'm using pocket holes.
I'm sure I'll never hear the end of that.
So, this jig has worked out quite well
for drilling the holes and getting them all lined up.
But, what I would do different next time
is I would make it out of a piece of wood
that's the same thickness as what I need to
drill into, and that way to clamp it to the edge,
I just need to screw another piece of plywood
to the side of it. And, for on here I can just
screw it on from the bottom, the same way.
And, one thing that's worked out really well
while making the jig, is to cut a thin slot
along the line of the holes,
because that helps to guide the point of the drill
in this direction, which means I only need to
worry about getting it just right in this direction.