Holier than thou, or the meek shall inherit the wood? #2: Days 2 and 3.

My shoptime allowance is spotty at best, however a couple of solid days in the last few weeks has allowed me the time to finish milling up all of the wood for my bookcase.

Up until recently I hadn’t really had a design in mind for the first prototype of the bookcase to rise from the wood of the old church pew. It is now starting to take shape. It will have 4 shelves, 2 fixed and 2 adjustable. The shelves and the risers are milled to 11/16”. The planned finished dimensions of the bookcase will be 48” tall by 30” wide. The shelves will have 1” reinforcing strips across the front and their finished depth will be 10 3/4”.

My goal is to make the entire bookcase out of the wood available in the reclamation of the pews. I don’t have any reasonable way to make a full sheet back normally found on freestanding bookcases to add strength and prevent racking. However, I did resaw some of the wood into 1/4” thick slabs and will be using them to act as stretchers(?) across the back for the fixed shelves.

I am using blind tapered sliding dovetail joinery on the fixed shelves.

Below is my milled up lumber ready for joinery work and dry fit.

A dry fit of the fixed shelves after cutting the sliding dovetails.

The dovetail from the rear. The shelf will sit in 1/4” from the back and a yet-to-be-milled rabbit will be cut to accept the 1/4” thick support that will extend up 10” from the bottom of the shelf.

This is the same shelf from the front. It does not have it’s reinforcing strip applied yet. That hole was a screw hole used to attach the seat to the back portion of the pew.