Steve Maskery
Established Member
I'm building a couple of built-ins as part of doing up my living room. One, to the left of the chimney-breast, will be up to the ceiling (there was one there originally, but someone has ripped it out 
), the other, to the right, just a metre or so high.
The walls are generally in pretty good shape, so I'm going to use them as the back and sides of the cupboards, so I just need some shelf-supports, which will, er, support the shelves. And the face-frame, actually.
The challenge is to arrange them so that that, wherever I decide to put a shelf, it will be level. So every notch has to be the same on all four corners.
This is how I achieved that.
I started by cutting the notch position out of a single board wide enough for me to be able to cut all four pieces from it. This is a piece of 6" by 2.5".
I set the trenching knob so that I didn't cut all the way through. It's a bit hit and miss, TBH, because there is quite a bit of bounce in the head of the saw, but that doesn't affect the position of the shelves, so I don't mind too much. But because of the way the head pivots, when it doesn't go all the way down, it doesn't go all the way back either, so I would end up with a bit of a scalloped cut at the back. So there is a dirty great big piece of scrap behind it to bring the workpiece forward, so that the scallop happens in the waste, not in the workpiece.
These shelves will be on 40mm centres, so I move the scrap piece up 40mm and clamp it. Then the first cut is lined up with the sawcut in the backer and held in place with a packing shim.
And so I keep going
Now I can rip them off, which makes handling them considerably easier. Notice how the cut end has pinched up. Thank goodness for riving knives, eh?
Now it's JIG TIME! Yay!
Whilst the angled cuts are not as critical as the square cuts, it's nice to have them as close as identical as possible. The jig consists of a piece of ply with a runner on the bottom which fits in the mitre slot. This is a fine example of why you need to set up your bandsaw to eliminate drift, rather than just compensate for it by skewing the fence. If I'd done the latter, I'd get a wonky cut using this jig.
The fence on the jig is set at 30 degrees, and there is a gap in it for the same spacer as I used before.
I locate the workpiece on the jig with the shim and make the cut. Slide up and repeat.
And in no time at all (well, just a hour or two) I have a complete set, all identical.
Enjoy.
), the other, to the right, just a metre or so high.The walls are generally in pretty good shape, so I'm going to use them as the back and sides of the cupboards, so I just need some shelf-supports, which will, er, support the shelves. And the face-frame, actually.
The challenge is to arrange them so that that, wherever I decide to put a shelf, it will be level. So every notch has to be the same on all four corners.
This is how I achieved that.
I started by cutting the notch position out of a single board wide enough for me to be able to cut all four pieces from it. This is a piece of 6" by 2.5".
I set the trenching knob so that I didn't cut all the way through. It's a bit hit and miss, TBH, because there is quite a bit of bounce in the head of the saw, but that doesn't affect the position of the shelves, so I don't mind too much. But because of the way the head pivots, when it doesn't go all the way down, it doesn't go all the way back either, so I would end up with a bit of a scalloped cut at the back. So there is a dirty great big piece of scrap behind it to bring the workpiece forward, so that the scallop happens in the waste, not in the workpiece.
These shelves will be on 40mm centres, so I move the scrap piece up 40mm and clamp it. Then the first cut is lined up with the sawcut in the backer and held in place with a packing shim.
And so I keep going
Now I can rip them off, which makes handling them considerably easier. Notice how the cut end has pinched up. Thank goodness for riving knives, eh?
Now it's JIG TIME! Yay!
Whilst the angled cuts are not as critical as the square cuts, it's nice to have them as close as identical as possible. The jig consists of a piece of ply with a runner on the bottom which fits in the mitre slot. This is a fine example of why you need to set up your bandsaw to eliminate drift, rather than just compensate for it by skewing the fence. If I'd done the latter, I'd get a wonky cut using this jig.
The fence on the jig is set at 30 degrees, and there is a gap in it for the same spacer as I used before.
I locate the workpiece on the jig with the shim and make the cut. Slide up and repeat.
And in no time at all (well, just a hour or two) I have a complete set, all identical.
Enjoy.
