Home made Red Oak Book Shelves for my bedroom

Here is the first shelf I had finished. I had to put a piece of backing board behind the short wall to support that end. luckily that section of wall was accessible from the inside of the closet.



I leveled the shelves up, side to side, and also along the wall, the curved corner dips about an eighth of an inch as for some reason, when I tighten the metal brackets down, the shelves wanted to have the outside edege about a half an inch lower than the wall side. I haven't figured out why. I tipped the shelves back level when I screwed the bracket on the short side to the wall.



I had a lot of trouble shear off the screws mounting the hardware to the red oak shelves. I ended up drilling the hole 1 drill bit size larger, and soaping the screws before I put them in.

Construction Details for Red Oak Bookcase

I marked the radius for the curved corner with a piece of jute twine and an old sharpie marker. I tied the twine to the top and bottom of the marker so that I held the pen a consistent up and down.

Here you can see where I have made the mark for the radius to cut with my jigsaw. I measured the width of the board with the string, used that distance away from the mark for the total length of the shelf, and drew the curve for the cut line.

Because I want these shelves to sit flush to the wall, I am recessing in the mounting hardware. This Red Oak for the shelves is kinda hard to work with using a chisel. It cuts a lot different then the pine I have chiseled in the past.

As you can see, the hardware mounts flush with the back of the shelf.

I have 3 of these shelves cut, chiseled, sanded and stained. I also have polyurethaned one side of these 3 shelves. I have also cut the remaining 4 shelves, I need to yet chisel out the notches for the hardware, sand, stain, and urethane the shelves.
I hope to get the shelving finished and hung this weekend so I can start putting my books on them later this next week.

Bedroom Red Oak Floating Bookshelf with Curved Front

I need to make some book shelves to put all of my books.

I think the best place to put some shelves would be along this wall here, in my bedroom. it is otherwise unusable space. Some shelving would be perfect here.

I came up with an interesting idea for the shelves. They will be attached directly to the wall, no sides or back to the shelves. I will also curve the corner pointed out into the room so I don't jam my leg or stomach in the middle of the night walking past them to go to the bathroom. I also thought it would be neat to 'step' the top several shelves back. I am hoping this turns out to be as neat in real life as it is in my head. We shall see, right?

Here you can see the step idea, I have 3 more shelves, the same size as the bottom shelf.

Here are the shelves after I have added a coat of Minwax Red Oak stain. The shelves are themselves made out of 1x8 Red Oak, so the stain really looks good. I am letting them dry on my clothes dryer rack. This seemed to work pretty well.

My bed frame grew legs!

 Sorry for the delay in posting this. I had put the bedframe up on legs a while ago, gosh the photo claims on the 8th!. Here you can see the legs. Nothing fancy, and I really don't like them. They didn't sit down as square as I would have hoped. No bother, they can be re-made I guess. They are rock-solid though. The bed doesn't move at all!



 I have been sleeping in the living room for 2-3 weeks now! When I trim the bed out, the posts will be notched for the bed frame and will occupy some of the empty space in the legs. The legs will get trimmed out square and have the posts step out a little bit. It should look pretty neat when I am done.

Bedframe basically complete.

You would think that 07 07 07 would be a lucky day, right? Katy has a terrible headache today, so I can't do ANYTHING right. I tried to make her supper, but I was out of eggs, I went to Taco Bell as my backup plan, but their card reader was down. I cut out, over the curb to get out of the drive through as I was parked in and bottomed out my truck on the curb. I don't see any damage to the underside though. So I guess it is all good. I learned that I can drive over a taller then normal curb with my truck, but I really shouldn't.


 Anyway, back to the topic on hand... Here I am cutting the notches into the 2x4s for the 1x12 planks can sit flush with the top of the 2x4 stringers. THese are my new saw-horses. The jury is still out on them, but so far, they are looking good. How do you like my high-tech push-stick sitting on the saw?


 Fancy, eh? I didn't even cut my fingers!


 The finished product. The planks all set flush, they don't slide around. There is no sqeaking as I walk across the bed. It supports my weight pretty well. All in all, I am happy! I am going to cut the legs tomorrow and put the bed into the bedroom.

Floor Joist Bracket Jig

 The floor joist brackets want to stay too far open for my taste.


 So I made a jig to hold it closed using a peice of scrap 2x4.


 The jig is just two screws set so that the stringers are held closed against the 2x4.


 I also added a centerline mark on the 2x4 so I can accuratly center my brackets where they need to be set on my bed frame.

Putting the bedframe together.

 Last night, Matt and Jessica came over for dinner (we all went out) and to play cards & Cranium. While they where deciding what they wanted to do, I started to screw the bed frame together.


 Matt had to help me as the one short end board had started to twist already. I put 3 screws in each end, and also used these metal brackets. To my great surprise the frame ended up perfectly square.


 Matt and I did a lot of figuring to try to get these floor joist brackets positioned right. We ended up getting it right on paper. I am quite proud that I got it figured out being that it was midnight and all. The outside ends are what made things work out weird. As you can see, my cat Sister was supervising, making sure her latest scratching post/ toy/ whatever she wants it to be is properly assembled.


 As you can see, All that is left for this part of the bed is to notch the 2x4 stringers so the 1X12s drop in and lay flush.

Stymied by the rain.

 Sunday I went to Lowes and picked up some 2x4s, 2x6s, 1x12s, and a box of floorjoist hangers and other overpriced metal connectors. I spent a lot more then I needed to if I was just to screw this thing together, but I want it so it can be disassembled fairly easily (trying to back out dozens of screws with rounded off heads doesn't count in my book).


 I cut all the pieces to length.


 My rough assembly showes that I measured about right, the cross peices will need to be cut down as they will be too long once I include the thickness of the metal brackets they slip into. I need to cut grooves into the 2x4 stringers to accept the 1x12s. This will allow the 1x12s to sit flush with the top of the 2x4s and lock into place I am hoping. I really hate beds that groan louder then you do when you get up in the morning.


 Here it sits. I got everything out today, and it started to rain. Just my luck!

The best laid plans of Mice and Men

Ok, I am sleeping in the living room right now. I figure after a year and a half of living in a bedroom, I can sleep in the living room for a month, right?
 My queen sized bed is in storage in Wisconsin. I bought a really nice Coleman queen sized air mattress for the time being. I want to build a bed frame that will allow me to have ample storage underneath it. Ok, my idea of ample storage is to put my table saw and other tools, plastic storage bins, and so forth underneath it. In my typical fashion, I want the whole thing to be easy to move - either by folding up, or easily disassembled (my idea of easily disassembled might be a bit more involved then other peoples as I can take the dash out of my 83 Mercury Cougar XR7 in 7 minutes and 38 seconds - ALL of it).

This basically means that I will need to strap the pieces to the roof of my Ford Escape as I don't have a trailer to haul a sheet of plywood.

I am going to make the frame out of 2x4s and 2x6s and use that pre-cut shelving material to surface the 'deck' of the bed frame. The whole thing is going to be about 30 inches tall, so I have 24 inches of clearance underneath. That will put the bed at nearly 40 inches tall.

My ultimate plans are to wrap the frame in oak 1 inch material to make it look nice. It is either going to be a big 4 post bed, or have nice tall bed posts. I have a ceiling fan to work around - it will actually be INSIDE the bed frame if I end up doing the 4 poster idea - how is THAT for fancy?

Anyway, off to Lowes to see how long I will be eating PB&J sandwiches...

Stuff on my shelves

 With 16 inch deep shelves, I can put a lot of books on my shelves. Here I have books 3 layers deep. I have the ones I haven't read up front, and the ones I have read in back.


 With no sides on the shelving, I can do neat things like put books in sideways and be able to access them from the side.


 Here is everything I put on the shelves tonight. Well, I also slid in the grey tub and firesafe on the bottom shelf. I have a lot of room left. My crockpot and electic skillet will go up top, and my dishes will go on the 2nd shelf from the bottom. I will probably rearrage stuff once or twice before I move.

Unbreakable Spiked Caster Cups

 I bought a package of these unbreakable spiked caster cups that won't crush rugs or carpets to go under my shelves. I knew that I am putting a lot of weight down onto a small area of surface area and it would take forever to knock the divits out of the carpet.


 I had to cut a corner of two of the casters off where the shelf sat tight against the wall.


 Here you see that with a corner cut off, I can put the shelf tight against the moulding.

Bookcase with shelves installed.

 Front view of the book case with all the shelves installed. It is pretty sturdy. I can grab the top shelf and pick myself off the ground. I think that a small child or a cat could climb this shelf without risk of it falling over it is so deep. It wants to wiggle though. It is very stiff front to back and side to side, but it will twist a little bit if you walk into the corner. It is actually kinda funny, it acts like it is ticklish. I don't think it will twist itself apart. Having 2 frames with longer shelves, like what I saw at the store, there wouldn't be any worry about the twist.


 Looking at the shelving from the back corner.


 I had originally thought to use the shelves like this, but when I waled around it and about poked an eye out on a corner, I changed my mind.


 Hey, it looks pretty good sitting there. I used to have my gray tub of bedclothes, my firesafe film vault, and a large box of food sitting where the shelf is now at.
I need to sand and paint the frame. I will do that when I move I guess. I think my electric sander is in a box in a friend's garage. I am going to caulk the seems with paintable caulk so I don't have any obvious joints when it's all done. I think it will look nice.

Final Assembly of shelving.

 Attaching the hinges to the frames. I attached them with the frame opened up so I have a better chance of getting them straight.


 I put the hinges on just below the height of the shelves so they would be less visible.


 Cool, eh? It folds up for easy transport. I can flop this on my roof rack on my car and carry it to my new place when I move.


 It's not many 6 shelf, 7 foot tall, 36 inch wide, 16 inch deep shelves that you can carry into a room through a door by yourself with one hand.

Cutting the 2nd set of tenons on my table saw.

OK, so I got lazy. I wasn't happy with the depth not being quite right with my tenons when I did them by hand. I have this new table saw sitting right inside my front door, I just as well use it, right?
 I cut the tenons using the miter guage and the rip fence. The Rip fence was set to the depth of the tenon, and the blade was set for what needed to be cut off as far is thickness. I then put the cross member against the miter guage, and cut the tenon about 10 times each side. I just move the board away from the fence an eight of an inch each cut.


 These are all much more consistant in size now. I used my chisel to clean up any rough spots or little thin pieces of wood I missed with the saw.


 I cut all the tenons tonight, glued, and rope-clamped the 2nd half of the shelving support tonight.


 Here are the two halves leaning against each other. Doesn't look like a bookshelf does it. This 2nd unit has twist in it too, the opposite direction of the one I glued up last night. So it is sitting out to dry blocked up to flex it the other way. I hope they come out square with each other.

Using rope as a clamp for my shelving

 I have the assembly all glued up. Now to clamp it. Normally half a dozen pipe clamps would be in order, but I don't own a single one. (gift idea, wink wink, nudge nudge)


 So for my latest rope trick, I am going to make some shelf clamps. A bowline, a truckers hitch, and tie the rope off. Simple, right?


 The second cross member gets cinched tight. I tied the rope to the top, tied a loop below the not. The rope goes down and under, and back to the loop. I feed the rope through the loop, and then pull down as hard as I can at the awkward angle and trying not to get any glue on me. When doing this, the loop in the rope acts like a pulley, and you can get the rope pulled tighter. I call it a truckers hitch because I have seen old truck drivers use it to tie down loads in their pickup trucks.


 I finished tying up each cross member as tight as I can make it. If you noticed, I tied 2 ropes in the same empty space, skipped a space, did 2 knots , skipped a space, did the last 2.


 I came back and tied the 2 ropes in a space together as tight as I could. This really cinched the tenon and mortise joints together.


 Here you can see my rope-work. Used up most of my rope doing this.


 I blocked each corner and laid the bookcase frame down on the ground. I then measured for square. It is an eight of an inch off. I think I can live with that.


 The top left corner was wanting to lift up off the ground. The frame isn't laying flat. So I removed the block under that corner and weighted it down. I am hoping that when everything dries up, it will come back halfway between where it currently is, and where it wanted to be, making a nice, flat shelving support.


I spoke with my dad about my do it yourself book shelf tonight. I had decided that I am going to cut the rest of the cross members with the table saw, and wanted to ask the best way to do it. He recommended using painters caulk to fill in the gaps in my joint work so the finished, painted shelving looks really good.

Assembling one of my shelving upright.

 The first cross piece gets fitted into the uprights. It works! Being that I am working on the ground and not on a workbench, that I am inexperienced with this type of woodworking, and so on, and so forth, my mortise and tenon cuts aren't perfect. When fitting the cross pieces to the uprights, I would flip and turn the cross members to try to find the best fit for edge alignment. Some of the mortises cut a little tweaking and most of the tenons got trimmed with the chisel.


 It kinda looks like a railing here, doesn't it? It is kinda challenging to get everything all lined up by myself. but I started at one end and worked back and forth until everything slipped together. Now I just need to take it all apart so I can glue it up.


 This is as far as I got today. I got one of the 2 halves assembled, and the mortises cut into the the remaining 2 uprights. I figure it will take most of the evening tomorrow to disassemble and glue, and reassemble the completed half. I am going to use a rope as a clamp to make the joints tight. I am also going to need to counter-twist this half as one corner wants to lift about an inch away from flat.


 I wanted to see what it looked like with a shelf in it. The assembly is actually upside down of how I am going to use it, but it lined up to my roller-stand better this way. I also have the finished end of the shelf facing away from me in the picture. Even though it is going to have some massive shelves, it should be fairly "light" to the eye.

Marking and Cutting the Tenons

 I marked the Tenon cut marks all the way around. I also made sure to X off the scrap on both ends at the same time so I didn't accidentally end up with a 90 degree twist in my tenons.


 I cut the ends on my miter box down to the lines.


 It really helps to cut at a 45 degree angle like this. You can see both lines that your trying to cut along. Spinning the piece, you cut at a 45 down the remaining line, and then about 5 strokes square to the lines will finish the cut.


 At first I tried using a rasp and file to clean up my cuts, but I found that the 3/4 inch chisel works much better when used like a knife to clean up the cuts. I keep the chisel sharp, so it is actually really easy to shave the wood smooth with it.
You can see where I marked my chisels with a cut depth mark in permanent marker so I knew how deep to cut my mortises. I didn't need to drill any holes in the corners. Besides cutting the 4 uprights to size with a jigsaw, I am making the whole shelf using only hand tools. Well, I will probably drill pilot holes for the hinges, so that won't be true.

Mortising the uprights for the bookshelf

 I remember my dad telling me to hide the worst face when your making something out of wood. That means that the worst of the knots in the wood are on the side that I will be cutting the mortises into. I had to flip the 2nd piece of wood so that the knots didn't line up with where I was going to need to cut the mortises. I don't even want to know how much of a pain it would be to cut a mortise on a knot.


 I sat the 2nd upright next to the first after I had it all marked. I wanted to make sure that I had everything correct. Measure twice, cut once, right?


 Two of my uprights finished and ready for the cross members now.

Cutting in the mortise.

 Not being sure how to do the corners of a mortise and keeping things clean, I thought I would drill pilot holes. This should keep my chisel cuts from "running" down the wood beyond where I am cutting, and give me a gauge of how deep I need to go. I can't really get them all that straight with a hand drill, well at least not as straight as I would like.


 I traced the edges with my chisel as was suggested. I see I need to get a new chisel. My one real chisel is too big, and the biggest one from my el-cheapo woodcarving set just isn't up to the job.


 I cut this down as deep as my little chisel can reach. It looks pretty good.


 Not quite deep enough, but look, it fits together! Now, I only need to make 24 of these without messing up!

Practicing cutting a Tenon

 I had never cut a mortice and tenon wood joint before, so I thought I would practice on some of the scrap pieces from cutting my uprights to size. This looks pretty good.


 Ohhps, rolling it over shows that I didn't have my saw straight. I may cut at least the cuts from the sides in my little miterbox so they are straight. Maybe at least start them and finish with the jigsaw.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Or... I have cut it 3 times and it is STILL too short!
 Here I have the wood all set up on my handy table saw rollers that I also use as saw horses - at least for picking stuff up so I don't have to always bend to reach it.


 I have picked out the straightest 4 peices and faced them all best side down like my dad taught me. I will mark the worst side and cut the mortices into the bad side too.


 The Jigsaw is handy, so I cut off the ends that are wanting to twist the worst. I half expect to have this stuff to twist itself up into pretzels before I am finished. Maybe if I hurry I can get it built and some weight on it before it gets too bad. I know I won't be painting it until I move as it is pretty wet still.

Bookshelf Idea

 I saw this bookshelf at Target yesterday for $230. Way out of my budget, but it got my wheels turning. It looks fairly strong, light, and easily portable as the uprights are hinged and fold flat.


 The uprights are essentially 2 ladders hinged together. You open them up, slide in the shelving, and finish opening them as wide as they will go.


 I did some figuring on how deep and wide I can make a single shelf. I figured if I use 16" deep shelves I would need shelves at least 30 inches wide if my "rungs" where 24" long with 1 inch lost on each end for the Mortice and Tenon joint I want to use to put the shelf together.


 $70 at Lowes bought me 8 2"x2" firring strips 8 foot long that look pretty clean. I only need 7. I got 6 white shelves that are 16 inches deep by 36 inches wide. I picked up 2 white finished door hinges.

I am going to pick the straightest 4 and cut them to 7 foot long for my uprights. I will mortices into these at 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 inches apart, plus 1.5 inches for each "rung". Well, actually, the top and bottom rungs will be 2 inches from the end, and I will spread the shelves out as close to the following numbers as I can get. The next best 3 firring strips get cut into 2 foot sections. I will cut tenons into each of these. This will get assembled into 2 ladders which will be hinged together. I may try to get fancy and recess my hinge in as well. We shall see.

The finished shelving unit will be simple and open. The shelves will be easily transportable - important with my upcoming move. And I got twice the shelving for 30% less cost then the shelving I was looking at buying.