Sliding Dovetail Bookcase for challenge

I’ve never used SketchUp, but do like coming up with different designs. And Sketchup seems to be pretty easy to come up to learn.

I made a similar bookcase with stopped dadoes but it wasn’t too sturdy. So I had to nail on a back panel, making it one-sided. This one has sliding dovetails making it easy to make up and fast to assemble. The SketchUp makes the dovetails easy; just draw a rectangle, use the pencil to draw the area that the router bit would cut out and then use the eraser to “route” it away. Then use the pushup tool to extrude to the final height/depth.

The pieces that would be a partial “back” and the double verticals give strength in the Y axis, but can be stagered front & back or even in the middle to make the piece truly uni-directional. The little areas in between the double verticals make great places for a favorite book, magazines or small doo-dads. While the sliding dovetails could make this easy to knockdown, I’d glue everything and even screw the little back pieces to the adjacent vertical members. Of course, the bottom is dovetailed too.

The neat thing about this design is that it can easily be scaled for diferent locations; a little taller and deeper and it could be a room divider. Plus it makes a dandy display for your turnings that have no other place to be shown.

Download the Sketchup file here.

-- Charlie in TN, looking for his tools...