reclaimed doug fir shelving part III: let us bolt the carcass to the walls

No action photos of hauling these things into the house, but my good mate Chad and his daughter Clara Lin showed up this morning for a bit of tom-foolery getting these assemblies into the room. Chad took one end, me the other, and Clara (who is 7) helped call out obstacles in the way ("step! watch the branches! Watch the door!") she was awesome as I was backing in and you know, we didn't bump a single corner with these 106" long carcasses.

afterward, we stole away for some of of the best Mexican food in the East Bay and fixed up to a few burritos and quesadillas in the back yard. Then Chad and Clara left for her swim lessons.

I began the final attachment of the shelves to the walls along the top. It began with scribing the middle shelf tier into the walls using blue tape and a striking knife to get the lines defined. worked OK. The walls are not plumb and fall away from the shelves, but that will be where trim molding details will help. more on that later.

I fabbed up some tabs which would join the top of the shelf to the doubletop plate of the room. There's just about an inch of gap anticipated between the ceiling, and the installed shelving carcasses on the leveling frames. This allows a drill with a 12" extension barely enough space to drive in the screws attaching the thing to the wall. Manual testing felt sturdy. time will tell!

Due to the uneven geometry of the walls, I scribed the shelving into the wall and got it all positioned as I wanted before taking a few measurements for the tab thickness, which was surely to be some odd taper that only marking the thicknesses out insitu would reveal.

I left a little note for me to forget about in the floor leveling frame. I hope it makes someone smile some day

things came out pretty level, so this has been a better-than-expected day!

reclaimed doug fir shelving part II: glueup, sawtooth shelving, drawers, LED lighting flashtest

woodworking is definitely work. Once all prereqs were met, i had no choice but to glue the carcasses together. Clamp extension "cleats" were on order as I had nothing that would reach across the 57" wide section. they seemed to come out square enough, though.

The middle upright slides into the left side carcass with two housed dados on the ends and a housed bridle joint in the middle. But this goes in *after* the glueup, so I used a long straight-ish stick to make sure all these pieces were in alignment. Even though the diagonal measured pretty close, it took a little "english" to get things lined up in the middle.

It was a fairly intense morning.

closeup of the wedged thru-tenons of the middle tier. these should really help solidify things i hope.

the shelves were high enough to clamp to the trestle of my garage so that they didn't tip over, and I could continue with more detailed work

sawtooth shelving brackets were on order

made an army of little shelf support sticks

The shelves were edge banded vg fir ply. I really made a mess of some of the veneer until I learned to control my scraper plane. The edge banding grain was squirrelly, despite being fir, so i didn't use my block plane.

Practice getting the LED tap lighting orientation correct. It will be on the inside face of the trim molding that will be on the vertical members of the shelf. Big expectations about this working out, more later.

I doubt I'll ever do a curved drawer front like this again, but i did it this way because I had miscalculated the overhang required by the lower vertical trim molding and where it would interface with the drawer slides. So instead of an abrupt "L" cut into the molding, I chose a curve edge, meeting a flat spot like so. What a bitch to fit, however. Probably a pattern router could make quick work of this but I was using paper/mdf templates and hand tools.

i'm posting this photo for my reference, mostly. but the way I fit the trim to the drawer fronts was to slide some MDF under the drawer front, clamp it in place, and then cut the curve of the reveal with a knife. I then transferred this to the moulding sticks to get close.

The gap is not great but these drawer fronts took all of last weekend.

My dad flew down to CA to spend time in LA with my sis and then up to Oakland to hang out with sarah and me. He helped me get everything in a supine position for final finishing before dragging into the house for install. he had a very important contribution to the design which I hadn't thought through: how to get the over door shelving installed. It takes a guy who's put satellites into orbit (literally) to figure out how to tie the bow and put a capstone on this shooting match. more on that later.

jeeze, i hope they fit into the house!

reclaimed doug fir shelving progress

these are some tall and wide constructions, completely out of my typical scale. sooo much work getting things all square and theoretically close in size. remembering which edge/surface is the reference one is important when you are 108" edge to edge, sharp. still quite fun.

I had my very steadfast mate, Chad over this afternoon helping tap all the large scale tenons and dovetails, and they are looking promising. His presence during glue-up should minimize expletives.

There will be a center vertical upright that will slot into this one via housed bridle joint. each component adds to the risk, but the end will hopefully be square enough for Oakland.

just in case you actually scrolled down to here, this is where the shelves will be installed. the frames are made of 3/4" birch ply, made as level as possible, and when I test drove one of the shelf uprights, it was aparent that the wall was way off (I checked with a level to verify that my pieces weren't just out of square!). this is where rubber greets road!

good bye, john henry

please impart whatever good luck remains in your engine to Mr Lowden

guest bedroom schematic r2

organizing the shelf spanning the door to be a bit taller, such that there are about half as much the distance to the door moulding as to the lateral edges.

Here's a close up of how the edge molding meets the base and stepback shelf overhang. Not sure if i want to do an ovolo or this plane curve seen here. or ogee?

shelving wood milling/lamination in progress

The shelf will reach from floor to ceiling, which is roughly 9'. I searched for the material and found some 18' lengths of shiplapped 6/4 fir that perhaps was used as truck bedding. They were mostly flat sawn, too. So i cut these boards in 2, and then surface planed them and ripped into 1" wide strips that were then ripped and glued up.

fair bit of glue and processing. why? well, it's VG fir on the cheap, that's why! I hope it to be a bit more stable, and easier to look at than trying to match a bunch of random flat sawn fir from the same source. it is a lot of trouble, but i hope it's worth while. so far, so good.

guest bedroom schematics in process

next big project is our guest room, where I want to install a wall sized bookshelf (12'x9'), a trundle/daybed and some desk workspace. Plan is to have it all made from reclaimed doug fir. I've got a few hundred bf of it in the and have been milling the shelf boxes right now.

sketchup model located here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Re44ubFkuMM1NoY0R0SDhIRmM/edit?usp=sharing

(i'm sure there's a lot of sketchup abuse going on here.)

some shots below, can't figure out how to toggle the floating annotations so the scene is a bit cluttered. shelving will have LED tape light aimed inward around the vertical supports. that's a built-in bench/trundle bed in the corner