My wife has a collection of Chinese paperback novels. We purchase these during our trips to Asia, so her friends are interested in borrowing some since the local book store and libraries doesn’t have any. She wanted a bookcase that can display the books nicely in the living room so the guests can easily select what they want to borrow. Since We were having a gathering a week away, I had a deadline to meet.

The design criteria was to be able to hold a mass of these smaller 5×8” books, along with other larger full size books we also have. I wanted a bookcase that was easy to build so I can meet the deadline, but different enough to show that this is a unique piece. My type of Project! I took the different size books as the basis of the design and played off the staggering effect. I have 6”, 9”, 12” and 18” deep shelves which holds all the different size books.

This cabinet without doors, stands freely at 7 feet tall by 8’ wide and took about 25 hours to build. The bookcase is made of HDOA ( Home Depot Oak Assortments). Stained with Minwax of some dark colors I just do not remember, finished in two coats of shellac and two coats of past wax to save time. I made a photoblog of the building process here.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028012&id=1322192424&l=ce25cdf4b2

I’ve been away from the Lumberjock scene for a while. I need to apologize to all the Lumberjocks who missed me. To the both of you, I’m sorry. I’ve been very busy building this Tea house in the back yard.

It’s my own design, an accumulation of all the things I seen and read about from Lumberjocks inspirations to Architecture Magazines photos, from Ancient Japanese temples to the Home Depot down the street. This is me.

It took me all summer to get to a point where I can share it with you guys. If you want to see a photo blog of the building process, click here.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030018&id=1322192424&l=ddfaa59fdd

My wife asked for a daybed, so I wanted to get it done quickly because I realized that if she wants something and I can get it to her before she had forgotten she had asked for it two years ago, then I would get points that can be traded in later for all sorts of things.

So it took me about 10 days, working on it a several hours a day. I had a fuzzy idea as to what the final product would look like, and I refined the vision as production progressed. This is not a hard thing to do for two reasons:

1. The economy of wood once again took the lead on the design of this day bed. The stock dimensional poplar at Lowe’s comes in six and eight foot length. The mattress comes in at 74” long. Trading the original mortise and tenons idea for dowels drawn tight with pocket screws saved me from purchasing 8 foot goods. Thus the dovetail on the headboard was my attempt to stretch a six foot board.
2. My limited tools and skills determined everything else.

Overall, the bed worked. It can be dismantled in minutes and it’s surprisingly strong and sturdy. I since put a few coats of shellac on the important parts of the bed since brushing shellac into all the nooks and crannies would really put me to sleep.

This is the first project I built with my Biscuit joiner, this was five years ago. I had to wait until I moved to take the picture since books filled it. Funny thing is, the Freud joiner was the first dedicated power woodworking tool I bought (drill doesn’t count). I didn’t have a circular saw so I had the people at the big box store rip the plywoods down to 11-1/4” pieces so I can fit in the back of my hatchback. This is biggest size bookshelf I can make from a sheet of4×8’ -3/4” birch and a one 1/4” birch. I dug around enough to find a cool book match piece for the back panel. Stock inside corner molding and 1×2 made up the trims. Unfortunately I think it looks better without books covering up the panel.

It suddenly hit me one day that I was not and probably will not be the great craftsman I wanted to be. So I took this thought to heart and built a dining table that would serve my wife and I. I went to the big box store, dug and found some quarter sawn pieces of oak to use as legs and aprons. Got a solid core slab door and went to work. The base consists of mortise and hunched tennons, with draw pins that doubles as dowels for the tapered legs to the adjacent aprons. The oak edge is attached with glue and exposed dowels, hand plane the bevels on the oak edges and stained the thing. The top is held in place by sliding dovetail locks that lets me easily remove the top to replace or to move. The whole thing took about 20 hours, spreaded into five days, at least five of those hours were used for finishing.

I remodeled the kitchen from the cork board floor to the birch plywood with poplar cabinets to the concrete counter top. I didn’t have much tools back then, so most the cuts were done by hand with my Japanese hand tools. I did use some power tools and the local retailer ripped the plywood to 2×8’ planks so they will fit in my hatchback. I recently started blogging, you can see more at www.cabinetguy.blogspot.com