Hand tooled bookcase in ash

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AndyT

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Looking around our house, there seemed to be nowhere left to fit another bookcase. But then my wife realised that where we had a single shelf behind the top of the bed, there was room above it for some more. Fortunately that meant that the bookcase had to be a bespoke job, which would have the nice side effect of using some of those old tools I seem to be accumulating nearly as fast as the books.

I took the easy option and bought the wood planed to size. It was all decent straight stuff, with no wastage, which was a good start.

Here is the kit of parts, with some of the bits cut to size and most of the joint work done:

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The design is simple. Two uprights about 6ft tall, with lap dovetails for a top cross piece, and an bottom shelf held in by sliding dovetail housings. Two intermediate uprights stop housed into the horizontals, with the other nine little shelves supported on pegs. A plywood back rebated in.

Stopped, tapered, dovetailed housing here:

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with the corresponding end to fit into it:

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This view shows the only spot in the house where I could clear a space for assembly - fortunately it's in the basement, next to the workshop:

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The ends have been glued and slid into place. This was my only major blunder - the joints were too tight and would not go all the way together. Cue larger mallet and much bashing! It might have been ok in softwood, but I'd got to the point where there was no give left, and I couldn't get it apart again either. (It looked worse close up.)

Fortunately the housings for the uprights were an easier fit. Here I've used a couple of corner clamps to make sure they don't fall out while I fit the dovetailed top.

After about an hour of scrabbling around on the floor, I had it all together. One advantage of the joints I'd chosen is that they don't need clamping, which is just as well, as my 4' sash clamps wouldn't have been big enough.

This shot is a reminder of the effort I had to put in the next day, planing and chiselling after assembly to cope with the joint that didn't slide all the way home. Fortunately, on a piece this size, an eighth of an inch here and there doesn't really show, especially in an old house where nothing much is horizontal or vertical.

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The intermediate shelves were held on pegs in accurately drilled holes. This pic shows my cheap and easy device for internal measurements for fitting the shelves: it's a piece of plastic mini-trunking. The lid is a nice tight fit onto the tray part, with just enough give in it to make it easy to adjust. I much prefer direct measurements like this to anything where you have to convert a measurement to a number and back again.

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I cut the back to fit but left it unattached until the bookcase was safely upstairs - it's much easier to manoeuvre an open structure.

This shows the finished article in place:

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You can't see it, but the sides go down behind the bed as legs to support the whole thing. The top is tied back to the wall with a couple of screws through mirror plates in the corners.

All ready for filling up over the next few months! And the only power tool used was the vacuum cleaner when I was sanding the finished piece.
 
That's very nice Andy. Are you trying to put me to shame by doing this all with hand tools??!!! :lol:

Is there any reason why you chose to taper your stopped dovetail housing? I would have thought that just a straight DT housing would have sufficed? Just a thought...

I guess you did all the dovetails by hand, how long did it take and what problems (if any) did you run into?

Looks like you used Ash veneered ply, where did you source that from and how much was it?

cheers
Steve
 
Orcamesh":j23dh206 said:
That's very nice Andy. Are you trying to put me to shame by doing this all with hand tools??!!! :lol:

Is there any reason why you chose to taper your stopped dovetail housing? I would have thought that just a straight DT housing would have sufficed? Just a thought...

I guess you did all the dovetails by hand, how long did it take and what problems (if any) did you run into?

Looks like you used Ash veneered ply, where did you source that from and how much was it?

cheers
Steve
No shame about it - I just like doing things the quiet way sometimes.

The theory with tapering the dovetail housing is that it all slides in easily and only locks up when fully home. If the dovetail part was parallel, you would have a lot of surface in contact by the time it was fully home, which could take a lot of force to fit. If you made it slack enough to slide, you would be relying on the glue to fill the gaps. That said, I did once do a similar-ish bookcase with straight dovetailed housings, tried it out dry and never managed to dismantle it for gluing!

Dovetails were the easiest bit, except that because the thing is so wide, sawing the tails was not down at bench level, but up high. I clamped the workpiece onto some 2x4 to stiffen it in the vice, and stood on a box to reach the end. (Sorry I didn't take any photos of that!)

The back is indeed ash veneered ply, which came from Robbins in Bristol, as did the rest. Not cheap, at £23 + VAT, and I only needed just over half of it.

I'm not sure how long this has all taken, as it has been on and off while I have done other things. (Including refurbishing sash windows and guttering and lots of painting.)
I bought the wood three months ago and only finished it last weekend. There were probably three or four full days but a lot of extra little sessions in between. I'm always underestimating how long things take that don't look as if you've done much - choosing which bit goes where, marking out, sanding etc. But it's nice to potter!
 

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