Saturday, October 24, 2009

Bake ins

So this is one of the shelves, I started adding the smaller bake in pieces to the edges of the shelves. It is quite time consuming as it has exposed the lack of proper sized clamps in my shop. So it is going to take me several days just to glue and clamp. You can also see that I made a small cutting boo boo, but I think I can recover with a patch, as there is still veneer to go on top that will cover it up.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Shellllvvvvesssssss

Well this pile represents my five shelves "in progress". On top are the big pieces of elm veneer that will be used for the tops and bottoms of the shelves. Under that the sticks are the alder pieces for the baked in edges. Under those are some smaller pieces of elm veneer for the edges of the shelves, and lastly the 3/4" ply that will form the body of the shelves.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

A Quick Trip and Starting the Shelves

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I was up to visit the Inside Passage School of Woodworking last Sunday. The reason was to drop off some wood that I had slabbed up last winter. About 40 slabs, mostly elm and maple, but with a few other odds n' ends including catalpa, Port Orford Cedar, old growth red cedar, and an unknown but very attractive cypress of some sort. Possibly Monterey Cypress. (My picture at the top of this blog is of me slabbing up the Port Orford log, of which IP received several slabs.)

The truck was overkill, but it was free so I can't complain! Here are the slabs all loaded and 'secured' in the truck. It took my son and I several hours to load it all up. It took the crew up at IP about 10 minutes to unload it all!


I have to say that my motives were not entirely altruistic - I am hoping to slab up more logs this upcoming winter and I needed to clear out some space in my storage area! My slab pile is moving from a one year rotation to a two year rotation, meaning that I will not be kilning and cleaning any up this fall. What I cut last winter will be processed next fall, clearing space for what I may cut next winter. Phew, that turned out to be complicated!

On to the shelves.

I cut out and fitted a shelf template out of plywood for the five shelves I need to make. The notches complicate things quite a bit, since I will be putting baked in edges on , then elm veneer over them. That way if the shelves are removed the plywood won't be visible.

So the notches need to be cut quite a bit oversized to allow for the bake in and the veneer. The shelves will be nosed with a piece of sapele about 2 1/2" wide on the front edge.

The shelves will be about 13" wide. Ideally there would be about 1 1/2" of sapele on the front, then 11 1/2" of elm veneer for the body of the shelf. This way the sapele edging would be the same width as the front posts of the bookcase. Unfortunately my veneers are not that wide, a kind of glaring planning error on my part.

Anyways I've got all the bake ins cut out of alder. I still need to trim them to size. First though I will spend some time cleaning up the edges of the plywood on the jointer.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Still On Top!

Top is all glued up. Also figured out how to attach it to the frame of the bookcase to allow for some modest expansion and contraction. Should not be much since the whole thing is frame and panel construction. Made up the necessary little blocks, a whole day of rather fussy work.

The top frame is partially shellaced, needs a couple more coats.

Have finally started to turn my attention to the shelves.

Bought some 3/4" baltic birch plywood from Windsor Plywood here in town. It was pretty crappy. I should have looked more closely at it before I bought it, it was probably made in China. At least they will cut it for you, unlike PJ White. And I must add that they did about 6 cuts for me for free. So they are good guys. Too bad their product is not!

I ordered a veneer bag and kit from Joe Woodworker's web site. Looks like a nice kit, but not impressed with his shipping charges to Canada. Some assembly will be required when it arrives.

Also got some good tips from Nick Nelson, an IP graduate, about how to do the baked on edges and dealing with some notches that I'll need to make in the shelves.

Onward and upward! (Well actually downward, from the top down to the shelves.)