Saturday, May 23, 2009

Christmas Comes But Twice a Year

I finally finished my big job. This built-in shelf / cubbie unit is my Christmas Present to my girlfriend (almost wife).


I can't get back far enough to get the entire wall in one picture. The picture below is three shots that have been stitched together, which is why there is a blur in places.


I am so damn tired and excited at the same time. I seldom do jobs this involved or large. Some how, My Lady was expecting it to take only two or three weeks, not six months. So for the last four months all I heard was, ...well, you know....

Her daughter moved out, so she decided to turn the spare room into her sewing room. She makes quilts when she can find the time. The wood will be left bare and unfinished. We like the look of the wood and we don't want any oils leeching into her fabric. We chose a dry wood (and it didn't cost a lot).

At one point I told her that her new workshop was my workshop first. That pissed her off. LMAO


A dry fit just to see how things are fitting. It's up-side-down and will become the part framing the window.

The "workshop", complete with sawdust on the floor. Here you see what will become the shelf just below the window. I used a 'router' (the blue thing) to make Rabbit Joints. In the fore-ground is a wood jig that took me a week to make cause I kept making it wrong. I used it to guide the router as I cut each joint. Leaning against the wall are the finished 'uprights' that will support the eleven foot six inch (3 meters) shelf.

The shelves are fourteen inches deep. Planks normally aren't that wide because they split and warp to easy, so I had to make my own by jointing two eight inch planks together.


The wood is Poplar. I used a 'Biscuit Joint' and glue to bond the planks together. Then I had to trim them down to my size.


The biscuit is an oval, or 'football' shaped piece of wood the gets put in a small slot in the edge of the planks. Here you can see the biscuit in the edges of the cut wood as well as in one of the rabbit joints. The only reason the biscuit is showing in this rabbit slot is because I didn't have the jointer centered.

I wasn't planning on posting so many pictures or saying so much. I am just so excited that it turned out so nice. Now I have some free time and can get to work on the game updates.

9 comments:

Dark_1423 said...

Great work. That looks nice. :)

extomorf said...

Untreated wood always looks better i think. It does look impressive so happy christmas to you and your misses.

Unknown said...

Poplar, hmm I got a guitar that has that wood I think. I remember when I had to make a rietveld chair in my first year in high school without ever having worked with wood whatsoever. That didn't quite work out:P

Qwildurn said...

Yeah, I was trying to forget my first high-school shop project. Maybe it was seventh grade, but... We were supposed to make these square things with a hole in the center to stack on a peg. A kiddie toy actually. We were expected to make all the cuts with a hand saw. My squares looked more like flower petals. One made a good triangle. I went home and used the big-guy tools in my dad's shop to make the only perfect one in the entire seventh grade. I think I got the only 'A' as well. Cheating? Exploiting? Bending of the rules? Getting the job done?

extomorf said...

Well i made a fuse tester for my first project and all i had to do for that is solder some metal onto a piece of plastic.

Unknown said...

Hmm, I probably would've melted the piece of plastic and jammed the metal through it >.>

Blade said...

Nice. A work of Art. The Symmetry is visually pleasing, and also the way the largest box just fills one of the "Pidgeon Holes" :)

I hope it gave you as much pleasure to make as for the viewer to enjoy.

All the Best .....Blade :)

Qwildurn said...

Thanks for the compliments guys.

The squares, or cubbies as I call them, started out as 14 x 14 x 14 cubes. The math worked out better to make the width about 14.5 inches and the hight about 13.75 inches. My Lady will store folded fabric mostly. I thought it would be best to allow the shelf inserts to be removable. The one box and the computer are doing exactly that. I slid the small shelf out and turned it 90 degrees and let it rest on top of the box and computer.

The solid shelf just below the window, the frame and uprights are all permanently glued in place. The whole thing fit together like a puzzle, interlocking it's self. Even in one of our famous earthquakes, it ain't goin nowhere, bub.

Terry17 said...

Like the pics. Damn nice work.