bookshelf [finished].

Well I finished the bookshelf a few weeks ago but just now got around to taking some photos of it. So starting with the 'bookshelf' I had in place since the day I moved in here oh I don't know about six years ago now -



Pretty sweet.

But then I drew up a plan -



And then I bought a bunch of lumber -



And then ... I had a bookshelf -



I haven't glued the 'mission'-style strips to each side yet cos I'm still undecided about them (those are the strips of wood behind the lamp). Overall I'm pretty satisfied - although of course I wish I had done some things differently and I'm already thinking of the next furniture project and how much better I will hopefully be able to make it.

Step #1 will be to move beyond Poor Man's joinery (i.e. pocket hole screws) and pony up for a decent router table and some bits so I can do mortise and tenon and dovetail joinery for my next project ... bedside tables. They'll match the design of the dresser - just on a smaller scale to give me some practice with those dovetails.

I walked to the library a couple weeks ago one evening and picked up some books about joinery, applying finishes (another weakness of mine due to my lack of - well - any real knowledge on the subject) and just general furniture building.

But for now at least my books are not stuffed in boxes on top of boxes on top of boxes ...



(Shows the bit of 'distressing' I did to the edge with a chisel)

bookshelf finishing.

So now I'm up to putting on the stain and varnish. Definitely learned some things from J's bed (like have a plan on how much to assemble before staining - too little would make assembly tough if not impossible - but too much makes staining more difficult and potentially sloppy-looking). I ended up trading in the rosewood stain for a slightly-less-red-slightly-more-orange black cherry.

It is beautiful. And just about matches the coffee table.

And another thing different this go around ... I felt it when I botched up the top piece by over belt-sanding it ... but no worries - it added character and made it look a little beat up (uhh, the in-vogue term would of course be 'distressed'). But the point that hit me so instead of getting upset made me smile a little to myself - this bookshelf is not mass-produced somewhere by machines. It is hand-made. By me. And so all the little imperfections - in the assembly - in the finishing - I have already begun to cherish. That's character.

And I'm cherishing the whole hand process - like not rushing through it but enjoying the moments. The delicate hand sanding to the edges. Putting on the stain by hand of course and then rubbing it off with old torn t-shirts of mine.

And the best part I've found ... rubbing on the Minwax poly.

On J's bed I used General Finishes (the same brand stain I've used on both now) poly acrylic that I applied - like the stain - with a foam brush. It did the trick and - while nothing really wrong with it - there is something special about soaking an old t-shirt and hand-rubbing in the poly. How it brings out the beautiful orange tones and warmth of the stain while the satin finish gives the piece just a hint of a subtle gloss -

So the shelves are already done (3 coats of the poly) and the two sides and back are drying out in the garage while today it pours rain after probably two weeks of unseasonably sunny-for-Springtime-in-the-northwest.

But one thing I forgot to mention - last weekend at Mclendon's after Katie pieced together an adorable planter of ground cover for her mum's day I went to pick out some hemlock lattice on a whim. The idea ending up being this -

Adding a touch of arts and crafts-slash-mission styling to the shelf for about twenty bucks. I ended up staining and varnishing the lattice trim separately and will glue it on once the sides have three coats of varnish themselves - part of that balance of how much to assemble before finishing. The only catch will be making sure the glue doesn't eek out ... but that'll be part of the whole assembly gig that I should be up to doing within the week.

Overall - I am having a grand time building this shelf and am really starting to enjoy woodworking. Maybe I'll build a dresser afterall ...

bookshelf finishing test.

So just wanted to test the wood conditioner and stain combination and see how it was going to look on the luan-veneered plywood and VG fir before I go to town this weekend and finish this thing (well - it'll take a week to put on the 4-5 coats of varnish - so it'll just be the stain this weekend).

Exhibit A -

I had some of the Zinsser stuff leftover from when I did J's bed + some Minwax stuff from I have no idea ... so I thought what the heck - since I had both of them why not see if there was a difference.

On the left obviously is the Minwax. On the right - the SealCoat. Hmm - the SealCoat is pure crap. The Minwax stuff is about 3.6 billion times better. Oh - and on the far left - no conditioner (note how the wood grain has pretty much disappeared ... so that's no good - duh).

Holy cow that's gorgeous. It's General Finishes Rosewood water-based stain that I picked up at the local woodworking shop the next town over. Tomorrow I'll test what a second coat looks like - but with that + 4-5 coats of satin varnish I am definitely excited to see how this bookshelf turns out ...

(close-up of the lousy SealCoat results ... )

Oh - and the other day I finished assembling all the pieces, routing the top and the final sanding so everything is ready to go ... supposed to be gorgeous out this weekend - perfect time to put on some music and stain away!

furniture building ... take two part two.

So moving on with building this little bookshelf ... I had left off with having glued the plywood sheets together.

Note to self: use more glue when laminating plywood. Lots more glue.

But after cutting everything down and reglueing some sheets I moved on to planing. Then more cutting. Took 5º off the bottom 4" of each leg by using a jig I had made a long time ago for my chop saw -

Then - in order to cut down the lengths wider than 2' (the widest cut possible on Katie's dad's table saw - a full foot more than mine) - I splurged $18 at Lowe's for a 100" circ saw guide. Best $18 I ever I spent. Seriously. This thing rocked the party -

I would use my drywall square and butt the guide up against it to make sure everything was nice and - well - square. Then clamped it down. Worked like a charm.

(It came with the guide - which could be halved into two 50" sections for shorter cuts - and the two C-clamps)

Then I had my 1-1/4"-thick top that I was 'veneering' the edges with 1x2" fir that I had planed to a width of 1-1/4" -

So I glued those around the front and sides -

My longest clamps are 24" so I had to get creative with the glueing options ... it worked is all I can say. And then - to even the little bits up that weren't perfectly smooth with the plywood - I used my new best friend to get the job done -

But no - I didn't even pay $5.00 like the sticker says - the guy I bought my table saw from at a garage sale just gave me the belt sander. I did have to get a new 80-grit belt for it but it works like a champ. Then some good old fashioned orbital sanding -

Followed by some hand sanding on all the pieces (including the legs as shown here) -

I even broke out a 3/4" chisel and added some knicks and stuff on the edges of the shelfs here and there - I may still 'distress' the wood a little more. But then - finally - time for assembly ...

Like I mentioned - this will involve lots of pocket holes so off I went (I did splurge for the 3" Kreg face clamp to help speed things up a bit) -

In order to screw the legs on I used my 24" clamps and secured them in place before drilling in the screws -

And in short order - the first side was done -

This is going to be one solid bookshelf.

Next - the other side. Then the back (just the 2x2 on top and bottom). Then ... finishing all the pieces before final assembly. We'll see how that goes ... it'll be interesting.

furniture building ... take two.

So it is springtime of course which means among other things it is apparently time to try my hand at building another piece of furniture. I was seriously all set to buy the Kent bookcase from Pottery Barn until seeing it in the store - thank goodness. Yes - some of their furniture is beautiful and totally heirloom quality ... that bookcase though - was not. It felt like a light breeze would blow it over. And the glass doors - a classy idea and what really appealed to me - were hinged on cheap, plastic tracks that felt - well - just cheap.

So ... I dug out an old receipt from Chom's Chevron in good ol' Marblemount dated eight-twenty-six-twenty-eleven. After a climbing weekend (a night at the Newhalem campground followed by a night atop Sourdough) we had stopped in Mount Vernon at this little spectacular sandwich shop. Next door to it was a random antique store where we wandered through and there in the far corner where the sun was streaming in was a cool bookcase. 'I could build that' I said to myself. So I pulled out the only scrap of paper I had at the time - that receipt - and scrawled on the back of it -

Seemed pretty simple. Some 2x2s, 1x2s and veneered plywood. I had taken a lot of pics of it on my good ol' iPhone 2G but ... that died on my backpacking trip out to Whatcom Pass a couple weeks later and they were lost for good. But luckily - I had that receipt.

So from that I fashioned a more detailed plan -

Some actual measurements and - well - a layout for how I was going to cut all the pieces out of the 4x8 sheets of plywood.

Then it was time to take a trip to good ol' Gray's Lumber off Sixth Ave in Tacoma (where I got all the lumber for J's bed - much, much better than the crap you find at the Home Depots and such). And surprisingly - their veneered plywood was only thirty bucks a sheet. I also picked up the fir 2x2s and 1x2s.

My plan then was to get four sheets of half-inch stuff - then glue them together so each face would be veneered (since you can see the outside and inside of the panels on a bookshelf). Plus - then the indent of the panels and such with the 2x2 posts would only be about 3/8" (I'm going to plane the 2x2s and 1x2s slightly to shave off just a bit of the dirty stuff and get down to the really nice, clean wood).

So then - starting with a big pile of lumber -

And then after hauling it to Katie's parents' place to have her dad help with his slightly-more-solid table saw to cut down the 4x8 sheets -

And then - glueing all the sheets up -

Now - time to start planing the 2x2s and 1x2s. Putting it together will involve about 3.7 billion pocket hole screws so I may splurge for one of the Kreg face clamps - much faster than loosening/tightening my C-clamp that many billions of times ...