This is the finished product. It’s the biggest project I have done with hardwood and I learned a lot.

I finished it with two coats of Minwax gel stain and 3 coats of Minwax brush-on lacquer. The stain was really easy to work with and especially to get into all the inside corners. The brush-on lacquer I had a lot harder time with. I couldn’t get it to lay down smooth on the large plywood pieces because it seemed like it was drying too fast. I’m sure there is a way to fix that with thinner or something but I think I will stick to wipe-on finished from General Finishes.

I used the Kreg jig exclusively for the assembly as I mentioned before and it worked great. I’m pretty sure I could use this as a jack stand for my truck and it would be rock solid.

The lid closers are from Rockler and were very easy to install with little adjustment. They have a pad for calculating the weight of your lid and therefore how many you will need. That said I would need three but I only put two on and it works perfectly. I’m sure I can find something I need at Rockler when I return the other one.

The top is just a frame with half inch plywood in the center and it bowed a little bit when sat on. This was a design oversight I suppose but not too hard to fix. I started stripping the finish off in 3 strips.

I made some supports from 1×2 and clipped off the ends at a 45 degree angle. I finished the supports like the rest of the box and glued and screwed them. The top is very solid now.

Overall I have a happy customer who likes to look out the window.

And just relax.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

It is very important to clamp the pieces properly when using the jig. The vise clamp comes with the system the others are ones I already had. I didn’t use any glue because the screws make it rock solid. It’s also nice to be able to take it apart in the event of a mistake which I had the occasion to test.

Another key to using the Kreg system is to drive the screws slowly. When I was testing on some scrap pieces, I had problems with the wood splitting. I was trying to drive the screws like you might drive a drywall screw into the wall. The thing to remember with Kreg is that the hole is mostly pre-drilled and the screws themselves are self-tapping. Driving them slow worked the best for me and of course you want to make sure you have the correct screw for you application.

You can’t always buy new tools when you need them and I just didn’t have clamps that were long enough to reach the whole way. I just combined two of my clamps which held it well enough to drive the screws.

Another new tool (or tool accessory) I got was a 1/2” rabbeting bit. Previously I had cut rabbets with two cuts on the table saw. It was hard to get setup properly and I didn’t always like how it turned out. This is also the first bit I got with the 1/2” shaft for my new router.

I cut a 1/2” x 1/2” rabbet in red oak in two passes and it was extremely clean.

That’s all for now. I’m still working on taking more pictures while I am working on the project. My next entry will be pictures of the finished product as soon as I get around to taking them.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Tyson is a great dog and I figured a dog like him needed a nice bed.

I drew the design using Sketchup and it has been in the planning stages for quite a while. I bought a Kreg pocket hole jig and basically planned the construction around that.

It’s currently in-progress in my shop so I should have another entry soon with some in-progress pictures.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

So without further ado here is the bookcase:

I haven’t done any work really with dovetails or gluing up panels so I tried to focus on those skills for this project. As you can see, the corner joints are done with dovetails and the shelves are attached with sliding dovetails. The bookends are what I think makes the project unique. They also use sliding dovetails and are able to slide out of the end of the case if you had a full shelf. The weight of books on them would cause them to “rack” in the dovetail slot and thus hold the books. They are made of alternating wood because I think it kind of makes the bookends look like books themselves.

The side panels are a glueup of cherry and maple to highlight the slots for the bookends. All of the pieces are 1” thick for strength and uniformity. I think this bookcase would be a great way for me to build my woodworking skills and end up with a nice bookcase.

Here is the Sketchup file. It has multiple scenes which can be accessed by clicking on the tabs at the top. I made one layer with the original drawing (which I found out can’t be on the default layer if you are going to use scenes). I then copied it to another layer and added books. For the exploded view, I copied to another layer and manually pulled the parts out.

Good luck to everyone and I welcome comments or questions on the design.

I’m going to try to put it back together and also make it stronger than it was before because I can see it has already been repaired once.

I started with pulling apart as much would come. Some of that you can see in the first picture and here it is the rest of the way.

1. First, I think the bottom piece is just supposed to float and not be glued in. It was glued in in the previous repair however. Should I try to get it out so it can float, should I glue it the rest of the way around, or should I leave the 3 sides loose?
2. Second, I think I should start with gluing the leg back together and then attaching those 3 sides to the other side. Is that right or should I glue it up all at once?
3. Third, in order to make it stronger I was thinking of adding a 1×3 as a sort of skirt around the bottom of the bench. The spot you can see in this picture is almost exactly 3/4” x 2 1/2” so the board would fit nicely against those notches in the legs.

I think most of the problem is from kids rocking back and forth while they sit on it so I want to give it a little more strength against rocking.

As always, comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated and I will post more as I make more progress.