Bookcase (cont.)

I hinted that I would be starting an interesting bookcase to join the dresser in our friends' toddler room.  Work on that is well under way.  This is a straight-forward project that only entails cutting plywood to size, running some dadoes through it and some well-placed rabbets in the back.  Much like the dresser, I put about an inch of birch on the show edges of the plywood.

Plywood panels cut to rough size

 Birch edging milled square and flat to rough size

Birch edging glued to plywood panel

Planing edging flush with plywood

 First glue-up

 Second glue-up

Final glue-up, and back added

In the next post I will highlight some of the details as well as the making of the doors.  The interesting part is all the outside compartments will be enclosed but the middle will remain open.

Bookcase

After the tedious finishing process on the dresser, it has been delivered and its recipients are happy.  That means the sawdust is flying again!  Work has started on the next piece for the toddler room, an interesting bookcase.  An update on that should be coming soon!

Dresser

I was asked by a friend to make a few pieces for their soon-to-be toddler room (more pieces for that room to come).  They found a design they liked online and I went off a few pictures.  It was to be painted white so I went with birch and birch ply.  After getting plywood cut to rough size, I then edged the show sides in birch, cut everything to final size and got the case glued up.

As you can possibly see, I had some bows in the plywood to deal with, a downfall of using BORG plywood.  After the glue had set and the clamps were off, I let this sit on the assembly table for a few days with lots of weight on top while I milled up other parts.  This helped the bowing a bit.

Some drawer face blanks in the clamps.

After they were all complete and the drawer boxes were glued up, I clamped the case upside down to the assembly table and used biscuits and glue to attach the top 2-inch piece of trim.  This helped with the bowing.

Then it was time to get all the drawer boxes mounted in the case.  Unfortunately this was made more tedious than it had to be thanks to some slight bowing in the vertical plywood pieces, so each drawer runner needed a bit of shimming, but eventually I got them to slide nice and smooth.

Legs cut out and attached, drawer fronts added after routing the v-groove detail.

Finally painted.  This proved to be the most challenging part of the project - getting a nice painted finish without spray equipment.

Butcher Block (cont.)

This butcher block cart was finished some time ago, so it's time to catch the blog up so we can move on to other projects.

After the top returned from the wide drum sander at the cabinet shop, it was time to slice it up again.

A few of the strips broke, highlighting where I probably didn't get enough glue during the first glue-up.  Re-glue and clamp:

From there it was just flipping every other section end for end and gluing up.  This time around, I only did a couple sections at a time until complete.  Back to the cabinet shop for a wide belt sanding and the top was complete.

That's when I noticed I hadn't flipped the last section... DOH!  I couldn't live with it that way, so I sliced that section back off, glued it back on the correct way, and went back to the cabinet shop one last time.

From there, it was straight forward: round over the top and treat with mineral oil, a basic cabinet made of solid eastern maple and maple ply made with mortise and tenon joinery, a poly finish on the cabinet, mineral oil on the top, and some smooth-moving locking casters that don't look quite right.  I am on the lookout for some less-conspicuous casters, but other than that, this project turned out well and got approval from the boss.