Roubo Folding Bookstand

[Pat Barry]

That was a pretty cool video. Is the sawing the hard part of the project? Also, what are the dimensions of the board you used after cutting to size?

[Rob Young]

My order of operations was different than you show.

I cut out the profile for the feet BEFORE resawing anything followed by dressing the edges with a rasp and spoke shave. Then I resawed the board, removed the "lip" and finally cut out the top profile. To get the angle for the feet so they rest level I just set it on the bench and used a pencil lying on the bench to trace the angle around each foot. Then I chiseled the foot end-grain to that angle.

As for smooting post-resaw, that went quite well cross-grain planing with a block plane and my shoulder plane. Chestnut also scrapes quite well (I was surprised by this). The two tricks I found for cleaning up were a sharp scraper (makes it easy to work right into a corner) and second, creative use of blue-tape and bench battens to hold the stand while I planed and scraped.

A long, low angle, paring chisel helps to clean up the endgrain exposed inside the joint.

Once I was done scraping, a quick hit with some 220 grit glued to a block evened things out and ready for the oil and wax.

[Jim Neeley]

Wow, Rick... Beautiful work! ..and thanks for the video!!

[Tony Shea]

Very cool video. Nicely done and something I must try. The hinging is just too cool not to want to try it out. I've always liked carvings and such that seemed as though they are different peices but are actually originally all one peice, ie chainlinks. This has a similar feel and is something which I'd be able to attempt. Again, great job on the stand and video.

[Rick Erickson]

That was a pretty cool video. Is the sawing the hard part of the project? Also, what are the dimensions of the board you used after cutting to size?

Thanks all for the kind words. My son had the patience to stand there and video my 5-hour effort. Of course about 1-hour of it was cleaning up the boards at the end.

Pat, sorry for the late response. I answered your question last night but for some reason don't see the post. Not sure what happened. The dimensions of the board I used were about 16" x 8 3/4" x 1". I think the 1" is about as thin as you want to go. You can download the template off of Popular Woodworking. The sawing wasn't really that difficult if you get it started right. Take it slow for the first inch into the wood and it is all down-hill from there (so to speak). For me the most challenging part was splitting the hinges with the fret saw. If you don't cut those perfectly plum the hinges will bind when you split them apart at the end.