The finished piece looks nice, you did a great job on the dovetails. A piece to be proud of.

Hi Tony 2096.


There's a lot of good advice there though building a bookcase isn't rocket science. Here's my 20 cents worth.

1) Put in a back on the whole piece. Rebate the sides and the top panels to conceal the ply or what ever you use for the back and reduce the shelf width elsewhere accordingly. Looks so much more professional.

2) Make the middle shelf adjustable bu 32mm intervals in the usual manner,

3) Add a kick board to the rear of the toe recess. Looks much more professional.

4) Use good quality under mount slides of the appropriate load carrying capacity for the drawers.

5) Join sides and top and bottom with stopped dadoes ie no visible fasteners on the outsides of the sides

To my eye the drawers look to be too deep for the piece and I'm concerned about the tipping issue unless the unit is secured to the wall. There's a hell of a lot of tipping moment there if the drawers and contents are heavy particularly if you go for full extension drawers such as I use almost universally now due to their superior functionality. Why not move the drawers to the base of the piece?

nice wood and love the dovetails

That's some very good work. Thank you for posting the trials and tribulations, gives others an idea of what to look out for.

What's the next project you are planning?

Thanks for the comments.

My next project will be a dining table. I'm following this thread which has given me some ideas on how to proceed: Jarrah Dining Table - WIP (although I'm going to be far slower than TP1!). I'm going to stick with blackwood now that I know how to handle it and it will match the bookcase as it is just near by.

Tony