Thread: 2 years since my first furniture project

Good for you!

I hope you are having fun with woodworking.

Keep an eye on the timber for sale thread. Every now and again something interesting pops up.

thanks John Samuel,
I have lined up a visit tomorrow to check out one of the member's clearouts!!

Here's another small furniture project I tackled, again this one is actually for the Mrs. She makes hand made soap (using the essential oils that go in the first shelf), and the stuff was always covering every flat surface in the house.
So I made a set of 10 drawers that each accommodate one batch.
This was quite a stretch for my skill level at the time, especially the drawer fitting to the webbing given my glue-ups for the sides and muntin didn't end up with flat boards. I was using wedges and dogs rather than bar clamps as this was long before I had any of those. I actually subsequently made some wooden bar wedges out of old jarrah floorboards that tighten with wedges. And later than that I found some bar clamps at various second hand shops around town. Makes it easier having the right tools for the job!
IMG_20201129_180849_2-COLLAGE.jpg

Before I tackled this build I made a mini version with a similar structure, out of pine, and I keep odd ends of tools and things in it.
IMG_20201129_180710_3.jpg

the most recent piece of furniture I made was this bookshelf.
It was quite a simple build in technical terms, but the scale of it resulting in quite a long build due to my exclusive use of hand tools.

It was a fun project, and I'm very pleased with the result.

mybookcase.jpg

Most of the wood came from a lady on gumtree who was moving house, she had this wood in her garage for 30 years since the passing of her father, who acquired the wood in payment for a job. It was already cut to all these lengths, so the design followed the 30cm lengths used as muntins between the shelves. I don't know what the wood is, it is surprisingly light for the volume per piece and it is fairly coarse and likes to tear and splinter. THankfully it was so mature and stable I was able to finish it straight off the plane for 95% of the surface. A bit of tidy with the card scraper. (I don't use sand paper).
To add room foran extra shelf and make it a hall way 'side table' height, I added a top (poplar). This meant I have 3 shelves instead of 2. I also added a bracket base and some molding under the top to make the appearance more pleasing, and less like a boring IKEA cube shelf.

bookcase hallway.jpg

Here are some progress shots, joinery was a breeze thanks to the components being nice and straight and square before marking it up.

bookshelf joinery collage.jpg
Assembly was more complicated than I would have originally expected, the middle two muntins and middle two shelves went together first (full length dados), then the ends went on (mortice and tenon), then the top and bottom went on (dovetail) then the bracket base and top attach with M8 screws. The front molding is blind nailed (brads with head cut off and driven under the raised chip), the mitred side moldings are glued in the front but float at the back but have a groove in the back of the molding that sits in a dowel that protrudes from the carcass, so it can move front to back with the case movement, but not up and down.

I don't measure with numbers, I use a story stick for my projects, and starting to find new ways to use dividers to layout my projects.
I want this hobby to fun and fluid, without lots of thinking and arithmetic. I don't like following a recipe to the letter when I cook, and I'm the same with woodworking, I start with drawing the overall structure, then I start to get the shape, layout and proportions I like on paper, I then start drawing out the joinery details and so forth.
If I'm not sure how a joint will work (like having a rabbet for the back of a case behind dovetails), I'll make a test piece with scraps or a small project with pine that features that joint arrangement.

bookcase drawings.jpg

The most satisfying thing about this project was that it was designed to fit a specific spot in the hallway, and now its doing a great job as intended!

thanks for reading