Monday, March 4, 2013

Continued progress on bookshelf

Things have been moving along on this project, as much as they can in the few hours a week I get in the shop these days.  The plans called for lots of pocket holes, including for holding the edging on the front of the shelves.  I don't have any particular problems with pocket hole joinery.  It's quick, easy, strong and so on, but  just not what I'm looking for in this project, especially not where you would seen them at all.  I do plan on using a few by the time the project is done, but carefully placed where they'll be totally hidden.  What I decided instead is to use some hardwood splines to attach the edging and stiffen up the shelves.  A little work at the router table led to some nice results.  I left the edging just proud of the plywood so I could use my hand plane to smooth it out to and seamless finish.




Next thing was to get going on the face frame.  In order to do that I needed to dry fit the case together and get things squared up.  Once I got a small army of clamps in place I started laying out the frame pieces, got them measured and cut to size.  When it comes time to assemble this I'll be making use of the aforementioned pocket hole screws.  The last step I tackled to this point was the plinth blocks.  The plans called for a dedicated router bit but I wasn't going to fork out the dough for a bit that would see little to no use past this project.  I just decided to get creative with a couple of bits I already had.  I used a couple of different set-ups at the router table and ended up with a decent end result.