Book Case 1

I'm going to build a small book case for my wife for this next project. The material I'll be using is this 3/4" oak veneer plywood, good both sides. The size of the book case will be 40" tall X 36" wide X 13" deep.

Working With Wood

A day later I cut out each piece and labeled them. But then I noticed something strange.

Each day that went by, the plywood was starting to cup. Now this piece was pretty nice when I got it home but it didn't stay that way for long. I tried bending some of the pieces straight by clamping them at each end with a small piece in the center. This had limited success depending on the piece I had clamped. I didn't expect any of this with plywood but I had to deal with it.

Here I'm trimming the two side pieces to the same length using my crosscut sled and a work stop.

I made this T shaped work stop and then clamped it to my crosscut sled. This worked pretty good and was easy to make.

For the top of the book case, the ends will be showing so I'm cutting a piece of oak that I'll use as edging.

I ripped two pieces 1/8" thick from my solid oak piece.

Then I re-cut my top piece shorter by 1/4" (1/8" per side) to accommodate my new 1/8" oak pieces (arrow). The small piece on the work bench is the plywood.

Then I glued and clamped the edging on each end.

With the solid oak being slightly larger than the plywood, this gave me enough extra to sand it flush.

1 2 3 4 5 6