4.5 billion years in the making.
But it would have gone faster with
Microjig
Maker of the GRR-RIPPER.
Work safer. Work smarter.
I went through my scrap bin and pulled out
a bunch of scrap pieces of half inch plywood
for this project.
And since this is a painted project,
I don't have to worry about the grain direction
or the color of the plywood matching.
The main challenge to this project is that
every piece is a different size.
I'm going to start by making a bunch of rectangles.
You can cut these out using any kind of saw you
happen to have.
A circular saw...
A jigsaw...
A band saw...
A table saw...
Or you could even use a hand saw.
Nah!
Five of these pieces are squares.
These are the shelves
and I'm going to cut out the curves differently
than I'm going to cut out the curves on the rectangles.
The curve on each of the square shelves
is just a quarter of a circle.
To draw the circle, I'll find the center
of the square by connecting the diagonals.
The distance from the center of the square
to the edge is the radius of the circle I'm going to draw.
And I'm setting that using my beam compass.
Cutting corners is easy with a jigsaw.
Or a band saw.
Or even a coping saw that
I would hold like this
if I had one.
And there are all kinds of ways to sand these curves smooth.
But actually, when it comes down to it,
most people just prefer using hand sandpaper
and a little bit of elbow grease.
Okay, I just totally made that up.
One corner of each of the upright vertical pieces
gets a one inch radius.
I'm going to join all of my shelves together
using my pocket hole jig.
I'm not really sure how to clamp this down
while I put the screws in
so I just put a board on top of the shelf
so that I can push this up against it
and hold it in place.
I'll see if that works.
I'm just trying to be super careful that I
don't go so far that it comes through the other side.
Those pocket screws will be hidden
because this side goes against the wall.
It's turning out really handy to have my plans
available while I'm trying to put this all together
so I can kind of visualize how it fits together.
I really should have looked at those closer
because this next shelf goes on like this
and if I had really thought that through
I would have drilled those holes at the same time
as these holes.
But I guess it doesn;t really matter.
It looks like I'm going to have to make up
this clamping strategy as I go along
but it looks like if I just lay this on its side,
I can clamp this together and put the screws in.
And really, that's the only tricky part
about using pocket screws.
You've got to clap your pieces together
to hold them in place while you put the screws in
or they'll just slide around.
And I'm only putting these in until
I feel a little bit of resistance.
because they will go all the way through
if I'm not careful.
Now I can start working my way up.
That was kind of tricky.
After letting that sit overnight,
it's surprisingly strong.
Of course, you could certainly make those joints
as complicated as you like.
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