Woodworker's Journal 2004 Spring, страница 20

10 Spring 2004 Arts & Crafts Furniture

Figure 1: Plow grooves into the rails on your router table with a 3/4" straight bit. Clamp stops to the fence to control the length of the groove.

Figure 2: Drill pilot holes to hold the screws that will secure the fixed shelves. Reshape the tops of the holes with a 3/8" chisel to accept square plugs.

Figure 3: Use a depth gauge on your drill bit and a template to place the holes for your shelf supports. A piece of pegboard works great for drilling these rows of holes.

Notice in the Side Panel Assembly Elevation that these grooves run from through mortise to through mortise and serve to capture the outer slats. The easiest way to mill the grooves is on the router table with a 1/2" straight bit raised to 1/4". Test your setup on scrap stock, then use pencil marks on the router table fence and stock to start and stop the cuts at the mortises.

With the grooves completed, mill a chamfer around the top edges of the stiles using a router and 1/4" chamfering bit or a block plane.

Riding the Rails

The upper and lower rails (pieces 2 and 3) join all the fixed structural elements of the bookcase. Rip and crosscut the rail stock to size, then cut three mortises into the edges of the rails to house the outer and center slats (pieces 4 and 5). Use the Side Panel Assembly Elevation to find their locations.

Next, form tenons at the ends of the rails. See the Upper Rail and Stile joinery Detail on the previous page to lay out the tenons. Use your table saw and a tenoning jig to make the tenon cheeks by slicing off each side of the rails. This will reveal a notch in the tenons because of the mortises you cut earlier. Now lower your saw blade to 1/4" and switch to the miter gauge to nibble away the edges of the rails and form the tenon shoulders. Chamfer the ends of the tenons as you did on the stiles.

Install a 3/4" straight bit into the router. Use this setup to plow grooves on the inside of each rail (see Figure 1

and the Upper Rail and Stile Joinery Detail). These grooves will accept the ends of the top and bottom shelves, so make them 3/8" deep and IOV2" long. It's OK to leave the ends of the grooves rounded, as they will be hidden by the notched corners of the top and bottom shelves. On the bottom rails, lay out the 21" radius as shown in the Elevation Drawings. Use the band saw to cut these curved arches. Sand the edges to remove the saw marks while keeping the gentie curves identical.

Cut the slats to size (pieces 4 and 5) and notch the ends, following the Slat Notch Detail Drawing. The ends of the slats remain at full thickness and will fit into the stopped mortises you cut earlier in the edges of the rails.

Test fit the side assemblies by placing the notched ends of the slats into the rail mortises, then drive the stiles onto the slat and rail subassembly. When everything fits correcdy, disassemble, apply glue and clamp the parts together. Keep the side assemblies perfectly square and flat until the glue cures and scrape off any excess glue after it has set.

The Shelves and Their Supports

There are four shelves in this bookcase: two fixed shelves and two adjustable middle shelves (pieces 6 and 7). Cut them to size, now. Note that the middle shelves are shorter than the fixed ones: this is because the latter fit into the mortises you made in the rails. The top and bottom shelves are glued in place and then secured with screws (pieces 8) whose heads will be hidden by square