Sunday, June 15, 2014

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!

3 comments :

  1. I like the clamp extention you used. I never thought of making something like this in wood. I usually use two clamps to span what I needed.

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  2. thanks ralph! yeah i was going to double up the clamps likeyou mention but it seemed like it would have been really awkward. plus i didn't have enough clamps. the wooden extensions actually worked pretty good...

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  3. Found this on Derek Cohen's web site http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMadeTools/index.html making a hotdog for your "Shooting Plane"

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