shelf [part two... and done].

So today - with rain in the forecast (i.e. no skiing at Rainier) my backup plan was to finish this shelf (so I can move on to the next project... for which I have quite the list going but nothing narrowed down - though I'd love to build something else... ).

That meant having to dado all the joints... so off I went clamping the jig to each piece and being careful to route on the correct side of my line (thankfully I only screwed up once - on a small piece for which I had enough scrap to recut)...

Eventually after a couple of hours I had a nice pile of dadoed wood...

And then... time to start putting this 6'x4' puzzle together! I figured building it lying down would be easiest - and so I quickly had the first half done glued and drying...

I realized at some point though it was gonna be hard to get this thing into the basement and that... maybe I should build it with screws instead of glue so it can be disassembled for easier transport. But it did pretty much go together like a puzzle - fit the right pieces together in the right order and BAM! Done!

With hooks on the end for ice axes and poles and such...

And a cubby for tents...

Then let the bin organization begin... (!)

I am stupid-excited to get this stuff finally organized properly. I don't know exactly how much the jig cost to build (probably $20-30) and the plywood was $35/sheet x 3 sheets. Not terrible for a custom randomized shelf.

And maybe the coolest part... it's modular!

Meaning if more room is needed I can build a top section (just 2' tall to make it a cool 6'x6' cube) that will line up with the four vertical ends - they can be stuck together with dowels even. Yeah... maybe I'll get started on the add-on right away hehe...

oh...

After finishing up testing the jig there was just some really spectacular summer evening light...

shelf [part one].

So tonight I decided it was high time to get rolling on this shelf. I'm excited. And I need some organization of my outdoor gear. Bad.

With 23" wide sheets of plywood to cross-cut I broke out my garage sale find Milwaukee circ saw. I have to say... it's definitely worth the $30 or so I paid for it over my old Skil. That thing was notoriously unable to make a perpendicular vertical cut which was lame. But this Milwaukee did a fine job! I tested each cut with a square...

Perfection. Or as close to it as possible with a hand power tool.

I used my trusty $20 guide and the included C-clamps (along with my 48" drywall square) to make some just-about-perfectly-straight and really really square cuts...

And ended up with a pile of lumber ready to be dado-ed!

Not enough time to start that tonight... so I just did my test and got everything ready for the real deal this weekend. This meant I got to test out my awesome jig!

Which basically worked perfectly. The only tough part was the pattern bit is only a hair over 1/4" high... and I'm trying to make a 1/4" deep dado. So it took some finessing to get the depth of the router set just right but then it was a piece of cake to make the dado joint...

Then fitted a second piece of scrap wood to test the joint...

Perfect! And ready to rock and roll... I'm excited to do all the joinery and really use my jig. And then get to organizing my gear!

dado jig.

So - umm - I tried organizing my outdoor gear. A while ago. So I got a couple big bins and a couple medium bins and a couple small bins. And I threw everything in them. Ugh. Still took me hours it seemed to pack for a simple overnight. And I go on overnight trips to the mountains... kind of a lot (I'm up to fifteen nights in a tent so far this year... halfway to my one month in a tent goal... ).

But to start I brought everything in from the garage to the basement. And it ended up - uhh - looking something like this -

Sooooo... I decided I should build something proper. Out of plywood (even though plywood is sort of stupid expensive anymore if you actually want anything decent). Ended up costing about $100. And my design turned out something like this -

So starting with the plywood then -

The key to this whole cubby-slash-shelf thing working is the joinery... all the joints are dados (which I've never done before). They can sort of be done on a table saw with a special dado blade but - well - not very easily (or should I say 'safely' since the guard has to be removed) and definitely not for this kind of project where the joints fall in the middle of say a six-foot-long sheet of plywood.

A router it is then...

But in order to dado properly with a router I really needed a jig. So I hopped over to the interwebs and found a couple different ones. I liked one in particular that used a pattern router bit - and thus did not require an extra piece of wood to be used as a router fence (so the jig was simpler to build - and pattern bits really aren't much more expensive than regular router bits).

Off then I went this evening to make the jig... I used a piece of 1x3 oak for the square ends and clear pine (a 1x4 and 1x6) for the cross sections. Then some jig parts I picked up at the local Rockler (where I ended up in a long chat with the old guy about photography... ). By far the toughest part was making absolutely one hundred percent or more like one hundred ten percent that the fixed part of the jig was square -

Then I clamped everything down super-duper-über tight and drilled the four screws (I even took the time to countersink the holes cos the router will need to glide over the jig and not catch on the screw heads) -

Once the fixed section was in place it was time to route out the slots for the screws - once again everything was totally clamped down while I routed out the 1/4" slots -

Then had to drill in the oak for the screws - set in place with some T-nuts (which I countersunk using a 3/4" spade bit) -

Screwed in the bolts and slid the adjustable part of the jig into place -

Then attached the knobs -

And it was done -

The key again is the pattern bit -

(Note how the bit is below a spinning collar - which follows a pattern - hence the name - or in the case of this jig the edges of the jig)

So the way the jig works is I will use a scrap piece of the plywood to set the width of the jig - clamp the knobs down tight - and route a 1/4" deep slot where all the joints will be. And the reason a jig is needed in the first place - instead of just getting a bit the thickness of the plywood - is because plywood is notoriously inconsistent in thickness (yeah - Rockler makes off-width bits but with this jig I'll be able to get a one hundred percent perfectly fit joint).

Yep.

Now to cross-cut all the 23" wide sheets of plywood to the sizes I need and then start dadoing. Lots. And lots. Of dadoing.