Use your books to decorate your home with a bookcase.
Bookcases provide convenient places to store possessions. Some bookcases purchased from the store come unassembled, with the new owners needing to build the bookcase. However, with the right size wood boards and the right building materials, you can build a bookcase from scratch. As long as you measure well, you can create a sturdy bookcase that will hold up for many years. Does this Spark an idea?
Materials
You'll need many tools, including a hammer, nails, sandpaper or some other sanding tool, measuring tools, a block plane, a combination square, glue, two clamps, a pencil and a circular saw. Bookcases are mostly made out of wooden boards that are routed to have tight grooves so that the shelves can fit into the grooves. These grooves are uniform so that you can remove or add bookshelves as you see fit, especially if you want to add something to the bookshelf that won't fit unless you raise or remove a bookshelf. If you want to maximize the strength of your frame, use oak and make the thickness double that of the bookshelves.
Cutting the Wood
When you use plywood, a more affordable alternative to sawed lumber, you can use trim to cover up the rough edges on the plywood. When you cut through the plywood, avoid using portable saws, which are highly dangerous. You can use a circular saw, but you might find cutting through the board cleanly difficult. You can ask the hardware store clerk where you purchased the lumber to saw through your plywood with the store's commercial saw. If these boards don't have the right length after the commercial saw cuts through them, you can further trim them with your circular saw.
Evening the Boards
As you're trimming your boards to the ideal length, frequently measure so that you do not have to throw away a board that's too short. Once you have cut all the boards, sand them before assembling the entire bookcase, or the friction caused by the rough edges will prevent the bookshelf from fitting together.
Assembling
Mark where you want the grooves to go with the pencil, and attach the shelf cleats to the sides of the bookcase with either glue or nails and a hammer. Attach the vertical back cleats. If you never want the shelves to move, you can hammer the shelves in so that they don't slide out at any point. You must nail the baseboard and the top of the bookcase, as well as the back, to the sides. Add the back last to ensure that it fits the bookcase. Use the block plane to scrape off wood from the top edge of the baseboard. Plane all of the side pieces of the bookcase, and then plane the front piece so that it matches.
Tags: block plane, build bookcase, rough edges