How to Build a Shaker Bookshelf - Woodworking

today's project is building this shaker bookshelf it's a fairly simple design so I took the time to go into more in-depth detail on my woodworking techniques so I hope you'll follow along build along I'll have a set of plans available I'm starting with building the sides of the cakes rough cutting the parts to little oversized it's a lot easier and more efficient to square up lumber that is a few inches bigger than what your final size is going to be rather than trying to square up a full eight foot board once I had the sides cut down I joined it one face flat and then headed to the planer to plan the other face parallel I then went back to the jointer to edge joint one side squared to the face once I had one edge straight I ripped a parallel edge on the opposite side of the table saw my final width for this board is six and a quarter inches but I'm ripping it a little wider at this point this is a safety measure if there's any gap between the boards when I go to glue them together I want a little extra beat to be able to rejoin the edge once it's glued up it I will cut the final panel to its final width in the past when I've done a panel clip you've seen me use a domino or biscuit joiner to help keep the board's lined up with each other during assembly in this project I'm going to show you how to do a panel globe without a Domino or a biscuit joiner I start by ripping some scrap plywood about two inches wide to act as calls then I cover them with clear packing tape to prevent any glue from sticking to them then I took a construction grade 2 by 4 plate and joined it as square and cut it into four inch ish wide blocks and cut a notch about a half inch deep a little wider than the bar on my clamps this will help hold the clamps up off the assembly table you'll see why this is important here in a minute so I have everything lined up here spread the glue and started clamping the panel up as normal but instead of tightening the clamps all the way I'm just tightening them until I feel some resistance if it is too much pressure added at this point the board's could slide and creating a ridge between each board so here's why a spacer block is important me to slide the head of my clamp under the bar and clamp my calls in place I put calls directly over the bar clamps pushing the board's down flat and tight against the bar I work my way down putting a call over each clamp this is making sure my panels glued up flat and without a ridge between the board's once I have the calls in place I add more parallel bar clamps and finish tightening them down to be sure I have good pressure across the joint as the glue sets up to a point where it's no longer runny I scrape off the excess while the glue dries on the side panels I move on to the top bottom and shelves using the same billing process as before to square up the lumber cutting it slightly oversized flattening a face planing it parallel joining an edge and ripping it slightly oversize on the table saw and then do the final panel glue up all right set my sides top and bottom I'm going to join them on the jointer get it make sure I have a nice straight edge and then rip them on the table saw I'm gonna do them all at the same time so that way I know for sure they're exactly the same way alright so since I cut each one a little bit long I'm going to square off one end to make sure it's square I'm going to first measure and mark where I want to cut the first board I'll get that all lined up on one end I'll leave it there I'll go down to the other end let's use my workpiece as an indicator to clamp down where I want my stop to be then they'll cut it the next board will go right to that spot and they'll be exactly the same way [Applause] all right now do the same procedure for the tops and bottoms market to length set it up in the soft set the stop and cut both pieces to the exact same line [Applause] that's tiny to cut some divas to accept the top and bottom pieces and I looked at each board and the nicer face I put down so I wanted to face the outside of the bookshelf and the inside is a less nicer face and then since my top and bottom shelves have been sanded they're not exactly three quarters anymore even though I milled into three quarters so I'm just gonna set them up here and use a scrap piece of wood to flush them up to the end make sure they're nice and flush then I'm going to mark on the backside where the data needs to go so the custody knows I'm just gonna ride my router against this little plywood fence here I'm just going to double stick tape down I'm gonna set it so it just covers up the pencil line check so I'll end up nice and smooth across there okay so the pattern bit in the router just right along that I'm gonna bottom out the router onto the workpiece then use my spacer to set the turret let's set my depth and one thing before I make the cut is I'm going to use my knife to sever the fibers there try to prevent tear-out on that end piece you can also clamp a piece there to help prevent that too all right I started out real gentle on that leading edge that edge is where you're gonna get any kind of tear out if it's gonna happen so I just start out real slow and then once I got past that it was full speed ahead to cut the rest of the dado I took in a couple of passes just to make sure I was being saved and not overworking the router at war creating an unsafe situation [Music] and for the bottom shelf is a few inches up off the bottom of course so I'm going to use the shelf itself as a spacer and then sandwich it between these two plywood runners since I used the shelf as a spacer to guarantee then it'll be a nice tight fit [Music] [Applause] ah pretty good fit all right so have my plywood jig with a line of holes in to set my knee spacing for the adjustable shelves I'm gonna line it up against here all right so have my router set up with a bushing in it same diameter as the hole in my jig I'm gonna use my spacer to set my depth stop I'm halfway down but I'm out of a pig so I'm gonna move my jig down and help you get it lined up that first hole is a quarter-inch hole for my bridge bit I'm gonna drop my drill bit in there you lined it up and that that will allow me to keep my holes exactly the same spot without any interruption lining it up perfectly all right so I got the first line of holes in and make sure that the second line line up exactly with the first one I'm just going to flip my jig over and that will ensure that each hole is still on exactly the same spot all right shelf pins are in now I want to make a decorative troop piece to go along the edges across the top and across that other far edge that'll be over there so this board's a little bit out of wax and make it safe to rip on the table saw I'm on a first joint one edge flat then I'll rip it a little wide then we get both side pieces out of this and then I'll mill it to its final width square it up and then cut it to its final 500 which back up the table saw it's a little multi-purpose operation there'll be a little bit safely trying to rip a crimping board on the table saw all right so it's time to do it dry assembly so I can get some exact measurements to fit the trim this might clean up here to help hold up the pieces all right cut the bottom rail cut this in nice and square I'm gonna flush it on this side make sure I'm flush to the front of the top of the shop even though in my drawing I know exactly what this length is if there anything got off just a little bit it's a lot safer to take that measurement from your actual workpiece so flush off this in flush all the way across here and then I got a good sharp pencil all right and then it's just a matter of cutting to the line I'm gonna glue this bottom rail onto the bottom shelf I'm gonna put a little blue tape on this very end because I don't want to get glue on this because I want to be able to take it apart still and a little wood glue it together while it's in place let's test fit it together that way I can make sure that this shelf is exactly centered on the bottom rail this would be a super strong glue bond without those dominoes but the dominoes just help with alignment if you don't have Domino's you'll just have to take a few extra minutes to make sure you're flying across all right now that they got the bottom rail glued to the bottom shelf is perfectly centered I'm going to take it apart and sand the inside faces of each of these guys and then I'll do the final assembly and then once the case is simple I'll start to work on cutting the top rail and stiles to their final length [Music] all right so by gluing the bottom shelf on there like that you get this really nice seamless super-tight looks like just one piece of wood the grain just kind of causes it to disappear so that's why I glued it first instead of glued it on there afterwards just a nice clean seam and that blue tape is so I don't sand where the styles going to come down so the trim on the side of the bookcase is going to come down and meet this I don't want to sand that because if it rounds that over then it's not gonna get a look cleans they're gonna be a little gap right there the carcass all right for the top rail I'm gonna find the center all right mark the top of my heart then the inn's that I cut off so like I cut this end off I'm just gonna use that as a spacer all right and then one of those thin strips that I cut earlier I'm going to use as a guide to draw my heart all right coming out of the bandsaw [Music] right I took the book of the bandsaw marks out at the spindle sander now I'm going to use just this flexible sanding strip to refine the edge make sure you wear eye protection so you can see clearly basically what I'm doing here is cutting the ends of the style square all right I got my top piece spacer so I can easily mark these guys to length here sure the glue is dry by now so just mark it to length all right now I'm just doing the final assembly of the face frame onto the case it's produced a pretty basic glue up all right same thing for the top just trying to gauge my glue usage I want to make sure I've good coverage but not so much that it runs down the cabinet on the inside I want to cut the styles for the side of the cabinet I cut them on the right hand side of the pencil line leaving the pencil so that resulted in this being just a little bit proud which is better than it being too short so I'm just going to take my router with a pattern bit and run it along there and clean it up all right so before I cut the wrapping on the back to accept the back I'm going to use this clean edge to measure for my shelves remember this take my total width and subtract 1/8 that way I don't have to jam them in there all right when I clean up the shelves I glued up just a little bit wide and a little bit long that way when it came time to come to their final size I knew they could be exactly perfectly square and parallel and all that so before I do anything else I'm going to join one edge rip the other edge at the table saw and then square off the ends to their appropriate length yeah if these ends all squared up stop well except cut them all the same length all right so it's time to rout the dado for the back panel so I have a rabbeting bit with a bearing set up and do it to trace along the side since this is only 3/4 inch material it's gonna be a little bit tippy so I added a bigger base to help give me a little bit more stability if I had something that was over 6 feet long the clamp on the edge of this to make it wider that would be a lot more safe than I don't so I'm just going to go with this and take my time [Music] right so they're rather left this rounded over so I'm just going to clean it up with a chisel all right so my plan of attack for finishing is I'm going to finish the inside first do that complete two that probably three or four coats and then flip it over so the face rails are up and then finish the sides and face last anyway I'm not trying to manage both sides at the same time getting into my wet work all right for the back panel since it's only about 3/8 of an inch thicker sub you just resize and pick the material in half to save on material I'll clean it for thickness and glue it up has a big full panel alright got my riser blocks back out and I'm going to use some more calls that are tape so the glue doesn't stick with it that's mainly because the thickness of the back is too thin now to using a domino for alignment so to make sure they glue up nice and flat I'm going to go back to the clamping the call method alright we got a nice fun panel glued up calls are keeping everything nice and flat and in line flush between each flush between each board so once it's dry I'm going to take it out of the clamps sand it and then rip it to its final width I left it just a little bit long so that way I can do rate an exact measurement on the inside of the case ribbon to its final width cut into its final length and put a finish on it and then the bookshelf is pretty much done from here alright check out the back set in place and I know the bottom is three quarters of an inch thick so I set my my square to three quarters of an inch and I'm going to mark the depth of the Shelf and I'm doing that because I don't want to have to try to figure out exactly how big this expansion gap is that I left all the way around it's about a sixteenth inch but I don't want to have to try to measure that that's kind of a pain so I'm just gonna eyeball the center of that and that will guarantee that I'm in the center of of the dado give it a little Walmart just to make sure my drill bit doesn't wander and then when I drill I'm going to rock the drill back and forth a little bit to make it an oblong hole so it can expand and contract all right there's my countersink hole I'll just attach it with wood screw right and then I'll just work my way around three screws on the bottom a couple screws up the side and three screws at the top roughly just to space them out just enough to hold the back on it doesn't have to be super strong just strong enough here we are at the end of another project thank you for watching I hope you'll watch some of my other videos please like subscribe do all that good stuff thanks for watching

Channel: Brian Benham - Artist • Designer • Craftsman

Views: 27,866

Keywords: Woodworking, Custom Furniture, Benham Design Concepts, Colorado Furniture Maker

Id: zh3z-fw-140

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020