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.

The pews being removed were very simple in style, down right bland and not much more than a block of wood with a butt divot. However I thought this would be an opportunity to ask the pastor to set aside as much as he could store, both for myself and to provide for him some practical creations from the wood. He asked for bookcases.

I had taken possession of a dozen of the seat portions of the pews.

My first attempt at transforming these into usable lumber took place last spring and resulted in running the entire seat through the surface planer. However after dealing with the variations in the bottom and and other inconsistencies, I was left with boards that were nominally 5/8” thick. I was looking to build a prototype bookcase about 48” tall by 30 wide or in that vicinity. I wasn’t happy with only 5/8” material.

It was only recently I joined LJ and decided to pose a forum question about some ideas. Thanks to all those that contributed.

I found the best way to deal with the material in general was to rip the seat down the middle, joint it, plane it and re-glue it for width. This leaves me with slightly less than 3/4” thickness.

I plan on building two prototypes. One will be a basic case using milled material, and one, based on the suggestion of another LJer will use the seat with its profile intact to create the si

Here’s the seat profile.

Now fess up, just how many of you stuck gum under there?

I suggested to my pastor that with today’s DNA testing we could catch the culprits :D.

I have already rough cut two of the 9’ seat boards down to 36” segments for milling.

Jointing, and planing come next, stay tuned.