Some of you may remember me making disparaging comments regarding a bookcase that I have been trying to build for many months now. Well, its finally emerged from the workshop and its time to tell the tale.
This bookcase, in red oak, started life as my second major bookcase build. The first had gone fairly smoothly and I was feeling fairly confident- first big mistake! I decided to build the bookcase out of red oak- nice and substantial I thought. I designed the bookcase myself as I wanted something a little different from all the standard plans. The case was to be simple, but with a twist. I decided to fix every shelf rather than have holes or other adjusting options. This decision led to a further fateful decision- to attach each shelf not just in a dado, but with a dado and three through tenons on each side. Little did I know just what I was letting myself in for!
In March last year I dimensioned my lumber, glued up the panels and cut the main pieces to size. I then got tied up in business work and the project sat in the shop until May. By that time, the humidity had risen, and several of the boards had bowed considerably. I had decided to make an mdf jig and plunge route the mortises- and then cut the dadoes- this I was able to do, but none of the shelves were straight enough to fit in the dadoes anymore. At that point, I put the project to one side to think on options.
A note on the routing approach to the through tenons- my jig worked pretty well- I cut the tenons on the inside, and was careful to plunge the router to a depth that left a very very thin layer of wood in the mortise- almost transparent. I did this to avoid tearout on the outside face of the uprights. I then used chisels to remove the last of the mortise and to square up the edges. Slow and painful, but worked pretty well.
Fast forward to October and the boards had not flattened themselves out. End result was that I re-ripped several of them along the glue line, re jointed and planed them, then reglued flat. A couple of them I replaced completely- I still have some extra bendy shelves for some other project!
By the time I was ready to cut my tenons, my new incra router fence had arrived and I had built a new router table. So I was able to use the fence to cut very consistent tenons. Substantial hand trimming was still required for tight fits- the end result looks better than it seemed it would at the time. By this time I was feeling a bit more confident. Then FWW turned up on my doorstep with an article on a through tenoned bookcase- explaining that this was one of the hardest things to build well! Although my version was larger, I think its a bit simpler and made of more easily manageable wood- but it did make me smile- and allowed my wife to point out that this was probably why I hadn't come across anything similar when I had been planning an designing the darned thing last March!
The glue up was a game of two halves- the first side was done with white glue, one shelf at a time, with a thousand clamps keeping everything square. Joining the shelves to the second side was another matter altogether. I lost count of the number of faces that had to be glued, so slow setting hide glue came into play, together with the help of my beautiful wife, a large persuading mallet (on the case, not my wife!) and many more clamps.
At this point I thought I was home free. The difficult stuff was done- all I needed now was a face frame (integral tenons to join things), trim the back to fit and mill up a suitable top. Of course it didn't quite turn out that way. Trimming the face frame was interrupted by the bearing on the flush trimming bit falling off, resulting in the router taking a detour into the side and the face frame. This gave me a chance to work on my patching skills! Fortunately, the top was fairly straight forward and so the bookcase moved into the living room just after the solstice tree moved out yesterday.
As you can see in the pictures, my wife wasted no time filling the shelves. You have probably noticed that the oak is unfinished- partly because I don't want to use noxious chemicals in the basement in the winter, and partly because we can't decide what finish we want- so the bookcase will remain unadorned until the spring.
Sorry the pics are not clearer- my camera was playing up today. For those interested the case is about 6 feet high, a little over 1 foot deep and around three feet wide.
Comments as always welcome
Mike
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Originally Posted by Mike Cutler
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