Building Cat Furniture

[Music] I was recently contacted to make a piece of cat furniture it was a crescent moon shaped shelf that matched this photo apparently the original maker doesn't produce them anymore so I said why not I started by figuring out the arc radius on paper once I had that I made a simple Circle cutting jig for my router [Music] to lay out the outside of the Crescent I used a quarter inch straight cutting bit to make the template I used some spare half inch thick plywood [Music] for these Cuts I only went about halfway through [Music] after the outline for the Crescent was done I needed to make a three-quarter inch wide Groove as it turned out the only three quarter inch wide bit I had was super janky after a light plunge to Mark the Spot I had to use a forstner bit to be able to make a hole so I could start the cut [Music] the screw will be used to lay out the mortises that the connecting piece that holds the two halves of the Crescent Moon together will go [Music] use the router base itself as a reference for where to start and stop this groove next I carefully cut out the Crescent Moon on the bandsaw at this point I'm just carefully removing the waste in the routed areas I don't want to cut into any of the full thickness of the plywood [Music] I finished the template off on the router table I used a flush cut Pit and the previously routed out grooves as a guide [Music] foreign I also didn't want the ends of the Moon to be too pointy so I softened them up with the belt sander [Music] to match the original piece I used true half inch thick Baltic perch plywood this stuff is really nice to work with it's dead flat void free and has thick exterior veneers [Music] I did lose a band saw blade while rough cutting these pieces out [Music] but luckily I did have a spare on hand so here's a little demonstration of how this groove works I'm using a three-quarter inch guide bushing installed on the base plate of the router in the router I'll have a half inch thick bit this will make the perfect mortise I used some carpet tape to affix the template to my Crescent moonside I wouldn't actually recommend using this kind of tape it is kind of cheap and when you try to remove it a lot of the residue stays on and takes forever to get off but it does work I cut the mortises First with what turned out to be an incredibly dull bit I only went a quarter of an inch deep but I probably should have done it in two passes [Music] once the mortise was done I cleaned up the outside [Music] when I cut the second moon shape out I used the other side of the template to make sure I ended up with two mirror images [Music] this can be backlit so I need to have a smaller kind of Moon shaped piece to go behind it the narrow edge of this part is what the LED strips are going to be attached to [Music] I didn't want the moon to sit a full half inch proud of the wall so to close that Gap I made a bit of a recess for this part to go into you can't see it here but this router does have an upper guide bushing that I'm using to make this groove [Music] I made that first Groove I used it as an outline to ensure that I could cleanly route away the rest of the inside of that recess I know this is going to be on the back side of something that screwed to a wall but I still want it to be neat [Music] so here you can see that when it's all done it'll stand off the wall about a quarter of an inch [Music] for the center piece I needed to make some bendy plywood with the blade raised about 3 8 of an inch high I started cutting grooves I use the masking tape as a visual reference just to make sure there is evenly spaced as I can get them they don't need to be perfect though [Music] foreign [Music] Baltic birch plywood is great for this kind of thing because the outside veneers are so thick kerf bending cheaper plywood can result in kind of a creased appearance on the outside of the Curve [Music] foreign [Music] to make trim pieces to go on the ends of that kerf bent part [Music] I also threw a slight round over on the edge of the Moon pieces [Music] one last step before gluing this whole thing together I had to cut out a hole for this tiny housing to be installed I designed and 3D printed this part and it's going to eventually hold a battery pack and a switch I also 3D printed a template for the hole and for some reason I made it about three times thicker than I needed to foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for the flange to be glued to this way it'll sit flat underneath the carpet it would have been easy to forget to do this but I also routed out a slot for the wiring to go through [Music] with all the provisions for the lighting done I then include the two pieces that make up the wall Side of the Moon together [Music] once that glue dried I added some countersunk screw holes so it could be mounted to a wall [Music] I sanded everything before final glue up in two stages always keeping the glue on the bottom side so nothing would drip down as it dried [Music] to finish I used three coats of water-based polyurethane [Music] I use the same type of switch that I used in the record shelf build link to that video is in the upper right all the connections were soldered with heat shrink applied [Music] to mount the switch I also 3D printed a little bracket this was glued to the switch which was then in turn glued into the housing [Music] next I glued in the 12 volt battery holder [Music] I've never been overly impressed with the adhesive that's on the back of LED strip lights in most applications I can use little brackets to screw on and make sure that the strips don't fall off however due to these clearance issues I didn't have room for that type of thing so I decided to add a layer of 3M double-sided tape I've had pretty good success having this stuff stick to just about anything if you want more in-depth info about LED strip lights my illuminated custom closet build videos in the upper right hand corner [Applause] [Music] once all the connections were complete I put in a battery and tried it out I used some hot glue to secure the switch housing and the wires thank you [Music] I lined the inside of the Crescent Moon with some self-adhesive carpet tiles after cutting three of them to width I had to modify one of those to leave a little flap to get to my battery compartment for this one I removed some of the paper backing and replaced it with some plucking material that I had so it wouldn't stick to the Moon I wanted to make sure that the carpet towels would really stick good to this so the cap wouldn't be able to scratch any of the carpet off so I added a layer of contact cement to the back of the kerf bent piece I did some tests and this greatly improved the adhesion of the carpet tiles and here you can see how the battery compartment is accessed I shipped the Shelf to the client who sent me this video in these pictures as you can see the kitty likes his new Lookout I hope you enjoyed this and if you made it this far thanks for watching

Channel: Catspaw Customs

Views: 5,197

Keywords: Cat furniture, Kerf bending, Plywood, Cat shelf, Moon shelf, Back lit, Catspaw customs, Router templates, Woodworking, Maker, Custom

Id: DvJArWXMAZA

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022