You may remember I was asking about making bookcases. I did look at the Ikea ones as you suggested but one of the gaps I want to fit a bookcase in is 60cm wide. The ikea ones come in 40cm and 80cm sizes. I've had a quick look around and 40 and 80 seem to be the standard sizes: is there a reason for this? They just seemed odd numbers: I would have expected either 50 and 100 if using a metric system or 30,
60, 90 if based on feet.
So I am wondering about making a 60cm wide bookcase. I got told off for suggesting I used melamine faced chip, so how about 6x1 PSE?
I could just butt it all together and use screws or plastic blocks but I'd like to learn to do it properly. Last time dadoes or rebates were suggested. I wonder whether "rabbets" is just a mispronunciation of rebates?
I suppose the easiest way is to use a router to make a square (in cross section) rebate. How do I get the width of the rebate to match the width of the wood?
What is the finished width of 1" PSE? Would it be about 20mm? I see there are 20mm straight router bits so that seems straightforward. Is it?
If the wood was say 23mm, do you search for someone selling a 23mm bit or do you thickness the wood down to the next standard size, i.e.
20mm? I would think you would try and keep the wood as thick as possible to give maximum strength and minimum sag but if no 23mm bit exists, I don't see there is any choice.
I suppose you could try to do two passes (one offset by 3mm) with a
20mm bit to make a 23mm rebate but it sounds like it would be very tricky to do accurately. Is the thickness option better?
For a beginner, would you recommend I route "straight through" rather than a blind stop before I reach the front edge of the book case?
The disadvantage with this is that I would still need to find a way of holding it all together. Would gluing the shelves and nailing the back be sufficient?
It was suggested that if I cut dovetail rebates, the shelves would hold themselves in place and hold the bookcase together. Very clever. I am confused about which dovetail bit to use though. There seem to be so many variations on width and angle. Which do I choose?
I imagine I try to get the width of the dovetail as close to the width of the shelf, so I look for one with a diameter of 20mm. If I use 6x1 for the sides, I would only be routing to a depth of say 7mm (one third), so do I look for a short length? What angle do I choose?
Routing the sides seems otherwise straightforward but I then need to do the shelf edges to match. Do I use a router table for this?
Sliding dovetails would be the way, but you might be better off getting an 800 wide Ikea bookcase and "adjusting" it - the shelves should be easy but the top/bottom will require a bit of fiddling. Or a 400 wide bookcase and a matching CD rack thing (about 200 wide)
You could use MDF if its painted. No need to cut slots.. make the sides out of two layers.. One the full height on the outside.. one cut into sections that fit between the shelves and support them. Glue the two together and then fit a wooden strip to the front to make it look like one piece. You can fit the strip to the shelves too and joint the strips if you want.
The top and bottom you can just but and screw through the inner pieces before you glue the outer pieces on to to hide all the fixings.
In effect its a box glued to the outside of another box that supports all the inside bits.
All you need is to be able to saw straight lines, sorry no excuse to buy jigs and power tools.
You could do it with real wood if you want the grain showing.
Simplest solution - buy the ikea bookcase and re-size it. Use a mitre saw to chop the shelves shorter, and the chopped-off piece as a guide for where to bore the dowel holes in the shortened end (I'm guessing they still use dowels and screws).
Next option - buy the pse - and check very carefully that it's square and uniform. An awful lot of the work/skill with timber is compensating for the irregularities/warps/damage etc.
You cut the rebate/rabbet/housing (all the same thing) to match your board/shelf. You do it in two passes against a straight edge with a cutter smaller than the rebate needed (and they need to be a *tight fit* to the board/shelf that goes into them).
Professionals would glue/screw and clamp up. If you haven't got suitably large clamps (actually sash cramps) - then you'll just have to rely on screws through the uprights and into the ends of the shelves - these need to all go in quickly as you'll have wet glue on all the shelves at once (i.e. you should dry test-assemble, before gluing).
Now - you're going to be cutting a lot of identical rebates/housings (I'd prefer the term housing, as rebates are often one-sided, whilst a housing is always a "channel"). The thing to do is to make a jig to cut them out - basically two parallel guides so you run the router down the inside of one guide, then back on the inside of the other (PS make sure you've learnt about cutting direction with routers). The jig is just two straight bits of wood that act as guides, spaced the right distance apart by two more pieces, which also act as the 90 degree guide against the edge of the timber.
If you don't have a router yet, I highly recommend the Bosch GKF 600 as a first router - not cheap, a bit small for some work, but superb quality and comes bundled with a very comprehensive set of top quality accessories. Shop around - you can probably get it for just over a 100 quid.
Another way of doing this is to use a circular saw to cut the shoulders of the housing, then the router to rough out the waste material in the middle.
Using the router alone, stopped housings are not much more difficult than through housings (you will have to finish off with a hand chisel to get the end square).
Dovetailed housings - er - leave that for a later project. (I agree that it's a quite a bit nicer solution - but there's a good bit greater potential for mis-measuring/mis-cutting - plus you need to develop a "feel" for the the right dimensions to get a fit that is just tight enough, but not too tight).
That's how I'd do it, but I'd have all the bits cut to size if I didn't have a decent chopsaw. I'd also use laminated pine panels instead of 6x1 PSE, which is good enough for flooring, but not much else. Then again, I'd buy something ready made and adapt it, as already suggested, but I'm guessing the OP might be a potential tool junkie :-)
Not entirely, at least on the ones I've seen, they also use cam nuts. See
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new holes for the cam nuts will be a bit trickier than just doing ones for dowels. You might need a pocket cutter rather than just a drill, to cut a flat bottomed hole.
On the other hand this shows a different system:
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they've changed it over time, or different size Billy bookcases use different methods.
Hmmm - good point about cutting the cam-nut recesses.
An alternative solution would be to abandon cam-nuts on that end of the shelf, and go for screws through the upright instead.
In fact that solution could be alternated, cam-nuts left-hand end on the first shelf and screws the right-hand, then screws left-hand end on the next shelf etc.
A project I built some years ago was a fairly basic bookshelf. For reasons that won't become obvious, I decided that I'd like to make it without using any nails or screws (or basically any mechanical fasteners). To that end I bought a little dovetailing bit for my router and used that for the shelf joints and also to hold the frame together. You know what? it turned out quite well. I did reconsider my principles though, and rebated a slot in the frame and nailed a plywood back on, that made it much more rigid.
Two things I learned from that project: Rounding off the edges of the frame and shelves adds a great deal to the appearance of the piece. The other thing I was very pleased about was that I thicknessed down the wood (shed grade planks) I used to 15mm. It doesn't sound like a big difference from the nominal 1-inch thickness I started with, but it made the bookshelf look a lot lighter - but it still didn't suffer from any sag due to the weight of the books. Though they were only paperbacks and the shelves were only 6 inches deep.
Don't expect it to make sense, that usually makes it easier! ;-)
Yup, that will make a nice solid shelf that won't sag too much.
Rabbets seems to be a more common term used in America - not sure of the origin, but it is quite possible its a corruption of rebate.
At its simplest level there are two options: use a cutter the right width in the first place, or, make more than one pass with a smaller cutter.
The right width cutter option usually works for man made boards of precise thickness. Its less useful for PSE.
You may find it had to get an exact fit if you go this route.
Plenty of choice... just comes down to choosing a technique.
Yup, that is the way to do it. The trick is you need to find a way to guide the router accurately. (much of the skill of routing is actually about creating ways to guide the tool accurately). There are at least three approaches that work well here.
1) mark your slot on the upright, carefully measure the distance between the cutter edge and the side of the routers base plate. Then clamp battens across your work, offset from the line you drew by the amount you measured:
A good material for bookshelves is blockboard - softwood strips, glued into a wide board and veneered. Good mechanically, as easy to work and finish as chipboard (i.e. wants a capping strip on the front edge)
How properly is properly? How long have you got, and how much kit?
Grooves are grooves along the grain. Dadoes are grooves across the grain. Rebate or rabbets (both legit, but rabbet is old) are grooves that run off the edge. Sliding dovetails are dadoes that aren't square, but have a dovetail section so that the shelf can't pull out.
Thick upright solid timbers, with horizontal dadoes in them, are a good way to build bookshelves. I wouldn't be too keen on dadoes in a manufactured board (plywood or blockboard OK, but not chip or MDF) and would instead look at an external fitting.
Sliding dovetails were a sod to cut with a plane, but easy with a router. However you do need some router experience beforehand, to know how to make it do just what you want, including adjusting fit. I'd dado version #1, maybe keep the dovetails for #2. I also wouldn't dovetail bookshelves built into a chimney breast alcove, because they're never square and you need wiggle room to make them fit.
Router would be my favoured way too. They're cheap, and this is one of the few jobs easier on a bench, rather than a router table.
For a 3/4" shelf, I'd use a half-inch cutter and probably four passes. Two down the middle (half and then non-quite depth) to hog out the bulk of the timber, then two light full-depth passes down each side, so as to finish it. It's much quicker to take two light passes than one heavy. It's also a lot better with a router to only cut on one side of the cutter (and up-cut against rotation, don't climb-mill). So rough cut in the middle first (both sides, but you don't care about finish) and back off the depth to make it an easy cut. Routers burn if the feed rate is too low, bog down if it's too high, so back off the cut depth to allow you to make an adequately fast cut, still under control.
3/4" cutters never fit 3/4" boards. So get yourself a cheap plastic dial caliper (4" long is handier) _not_ just a ruler, and get into the habit of measuring every cut before you make it. You can do three of your four cuts fast without hardly measuring, then nail the last one dead-on for a perfect fit. It's also worth dadoing a piece of scrap before for practice, and to find the width of the perfect dado to give you the fit you want.
Don't go down this route. Not only are 20mm boards and cutters different sizes, but you'd also be relying on cutting the two sides in one pass. That's not a goood way for hand-held bench work.
Up to you. But a stopped dado is easier than you think, so go for it. You can even set the edge of the shelf back fron the front and chamfer the upright to match - that can make a substantial upright look visually lighter.
Don't glue or nail anything unless you understand timber movement with moisture. Bookshelves are wide enough that this will be a problem. Otherwise use a constructed board, which effectively doesn't move. Read Hoadley's "Understanding Wood" if you want to know more, or else the Forest Products Handbook (not quite as readable, but a free download)
If it's a built-in shelf, don't nail anything. Stopped dadoes to keep the shelves from falling out forwards, uprights hung off the walls.
If you make a free-standing bookcase, make the top and bottom hold the ends on somehow, then still make the shelves free-floating inside. Personally I like Craftsman / Stickley styles, so visible external tusked tenons are a good way to do this. Otherwise you might make a joined frame (squareish section rails, with glued tenons and just infill the flat panels), set the ends underneath the top and tenon them into the top, or else go with the dovetailed horizontal carcase into over-sized end cheeks.
Yes, but not trivial.
Whatever's there, and just use the same bit to cut both pieces. There's not that much variation.
I really wouldn't dovetail the shelves. You can dovetail top and bottom carcase, because that's thick timber, but if you dovetail the shelves (which are probably thinner) you have the risk of making a very skinny and weak dovetail. The usual fix is to make a very _short_ dovetail, which doesn't thin the shelf timber by as much.
As before, skinny cutters and two passes. It's also usual to hog out most of the waste with a stronger straight cutter beforehand, as these cut better than dovetail cutters. A "sunken" two-side cut with a dovetail cutter is a hateful thing, as the chips can't clear. Always do this with a straight first, just to make chip space.
No, because you'd be trying to pass a shelf through the table on-end vertically, and that's going to wobble. Don't try to table-rout anything heavier than your table! Clamp the shelf up with the end overhanging, then rout it freehand, with the router horizontal. You probably need a disposable fence extension (scrap MDF) on there to avoid risk of toppling routers. Fortunately it's only a very light cut.
In commercial use, these are best done on a horizontal spindle morticer, running as a router, with the shelf supported on a sliding table.
As you sound quite serious about the level of cabinetry you're aiming at, I'd suggest some of my favourite cabinetry books:
Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking
The Furniture of Gustav Stickley Bavarro & Mossman
a laminate trimmer), and there's some tempering fault on the collets so they all keep breaking. Nasty fine depth adjust too.
If you want the best router around, get a De Walt 621 (the one with the fat leg) and buy a US spare 1/2" collet for it from any DW spares place (bizarrely not sold as standard in the UK).
Apologies to Stephen for hijacking the thread a little, but I was wondering what Andy's thoughts on the Bosch router were based on?
I had been thinking of getting a "small"[1] router for single handed work - mostly for use in the workshop for light detailing tasks like running round edges with a 1/4" roundover bit etc, and perhaps use in the field for hinge rebates.
Based on the reviews and videos I have seen so far, I quite liked the look of that Bosch for the jobs I had in mind. Is there a particular reason to avoid? and if so, got a suggestion for something similar in size and scope?
[1] My current smallest machine is a Trend T5 - so more DW 621 size and power.
Andy is correct that it doesn't have a speed control.
But I've had mine for a couple of years, and have had no issues with any of it - including the collet. No problems with the height adjust either. I mostly use mine for roundovers and skimming out hinge recesses or other inset ironmongery (big stuff gets my CMT/Elu177).
I'd like the base to be square, rather than slightly rectangular, as it'd be easier to calculate spacing from guide battens, but otherwise no issues for me. I've occasionally found something useful in the accessories to also use with other tools.
The action doesn't plunge (though it does have a fine adjust), so sometimes it's necessary to start it tipped up on one edge and "tip it on" - fine for shallow cuts like hinge recesses - but might be more tricky if you need to do deep stopped grooves.
But the whole thing is lovely to handle and produces great results with ease.
Thanks. I did think about cutting 200mm off the shelves of an 800mm bookcase but then thought if I am going to trim 95% of it, why not buy my own wood and make my own?
As it happens I have two 600mm gaps. In one room I want to store dvds, so I could use a dvd/cd rack thing but if all goes well, I may decide to repeat the project and make a bookcase in the other room and a dvd rack wouldn't be any use there. Or would it? Can the shelf heights be adjusted?
Thanks I followed the rest of your post but I wonder whether MDF would be strong enough? In my (limited) experience, I have found it very saggy but this is based on sheets
I am a bit unsure about which wood is best for which application. I only suggested 6x1 PSE because around here there are a number of timber merchants who are geared up for the construction industries rather than joinery, so softwood is all they have. I figured if I waited until I found a decent timber merchant, nothing would ever get done!
When you say laminated pine, is this block board or is it something else all together? If you had a good timber merchant and a choice of any wood type, what would you choose for a book case? Is one wood better suited than any other or is it more about the appearance?
They are and you can double them up like the sides and top. You can also fix through the back to stiffen the rear of the shelves and fitting a wood strip to the front stiffens the front. It is still possible to put to much weight on them as it is with any shelf and you can make any shelving stronger by adding more uprights rather than relying on the two sides. Additional uprights also serve as bookends to stop stuff falling over.
I think another poster said that only one shelf in the middle uses dowel screws and the rest just sit on pegs. In an ideal world this would mean that the shelf only needed to have 200mm cut off and nothing else. However, I've got a feeling it isn't that simple and the pins sit in a recess, so I guess there would be a second step involving making this recess and making sure it was neither too shallow nor too deep.
So it might be best to get the merchant to pass it through the planer/thicknesser for me?
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