Mom's big bookcase

This is a bookshelf that I built for my mom. This is also the first project I “designed” from scratch. The shelves needed to be at least 14” apart because mom has a lot of huge books that needed a place to live. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures during construction or even before I delivered it.

I used a sheet and a half of birch plywood for the sides, shelves and toe kick. Made 1” trim from solid birch to cover all exposed plywood edges and provide strength for the shelves. The back is a piece of 1/2” plywood seated into a rabbet and screwed into each shelf. The shelves are all fixed (again to help prevent sagging) into dados. I pre-finished the parts before glue up.

The finish is transtint medium brown. followed by 3 coats of target coating’s waterborne lacquer for the sides and general finishes water-based poly for the shelves back and toe kick.

Things I learned during this project:
No matter how much you sand you DO need to raise the grain when using water-based finishes.
Just because its called a plywood bit doesn’t mean it makes groves the same width as your plywood.
Do a dry run before glue-up and don’t change your mind during the actual glue up.

-- Eric - Baltimore MD