This project is a commissioned work for a family friend. She provided me with a tiny photo/rendering and I worked things out from there. It's not "my" taste, but this woman did great service helping with some of the emotional issues our older daughter "enjoys" and that was worth the time I put into it. When she asked for a cost, let's just say I covered the material plus a couple lattés. If anybody else asked...nope...big bucks...
Construction of the carcass was relatively straight forward, but the ash I used resulted in an extremely heavy piece. The legs are where the "action" was relative to construction with interesting angles and a half-lap for strength. The legs were made from 8/4 maple milled to 1.75" finished thickness. I chose maple because of its strength, stiffness and the ability to get a perfectly smooth surface once painted which contrasts with the grain and pore structure of the ash. The client (thankfully) selected the option to keep the ash natural...that piece would have been a pain to dye/stain, etc.
The following is a "build" thread for this project.
After milling the 4/4 ash to 3/4" on the J/P and straight line ripping at the sliding table saw, several panels needed to be glued up to accomodate the required dimensions. This piece is ~40" wide by 20" tall relative to the carcass. This is the case back blank
Before gluing up the end panels, the bottom board received a 3/8 rabbit at the front to help lock together that lower piece later on. It could have been a butt joint like the back to the sides would be, but I chose the rabbit "just because"
The ends/sides would effectively be triangular, so their glue-up reflects that to avoid excessive waste. I was in advertantly "really close" on material for this project as I'll note again soon
So that I could make both ends/sides exactly the same, I ganged them together with some 23 gage pins in off-cut areas and with some scrap pinned to the edges. In that manner, one cut for the angle would take care of both ends/sides
I further lightly tacked some thin scrap to the ganged blanks; one on the exact cutting line so I could line things up at the saw and one smaller piece further back to support the panels "flat" to the saw's wagon
One of the wonderful benefits of a sliding table saw is the inherent ability to clamp the workpiece down in whatever orientation gives you the exact cut line your want. Here, you can see that the ganged blank for the ends/sides is fastened such that the cut line is lined up with the blade and the miter fence, using the long thin scrap you saw I pinned to the bottom as a guide for the line
The board for the front was left wider than needed so that it could be marked to match the sides, the angle measured and the angle then transferred to the saw's arbor for a bevel that would match the mark. In hindsight, I would have done this piece a little differently relative to profile, but the client liked this idea
The next operation was to locate the partitions that keep the LP records separated into three bins on two levels. Initially, the plan was for 3/4" thickness on these partitions, but the math didn't work and I reduced them to 1/2"...which actually turned out to be more attractive
That was followed by a dry fit without the bin bottoms
From there, we start at the front and work our way back...here, the front piece and the middle partition are glued up. Where I could, I used pocket screws on the bottom to help speed things up and provide additional mechanical security. LP records have weight to them...
The result of that first glue-up is thus...
The second level gets added to that, again with pocket screws hidden underneath and just two countersunk screws from the front which will not likely be visible very often once the unit is in use. A temporary support is under that back shelf to insure it stays perpendicular to the middle partition. And this is where I bring back that mention of "material being really close". I bought 31 board feet of ash which should have been more than enough. But that last piece remaining was an inch short of being able to be used for the rear bottom piece. Since there will be a felt liner inside the bins, I grabbed a piece of 'scrap' red oak and used it for that bottom piece, adding an inch to it's width with scrap ash. No regrets and it will "disappear" later.