First Project - Matching Bookcases


Everett

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So, i finally finished up my first woodworking project. I was tasked with making two bookcases that matched a TV stand we already had.

So, trouble was getting the color to match. Seems like it came out alright.

-Red Oak

-Hard Maple - Drawers

-1 coat Minwax Red Oak oil based stain wiped (i'm convinced Minwax "stain" is also a dye, since with a true stain, from what i've read, and according to Charles Neil, reaches the only color it can do in one coat)

-3 coats of 50% Mineral Spirits/50% Minwax Gloss Poly

-1 Final coat of 75% Naptha/25% Minwax Semi-Gloss Poly

What I learned from this first project?

1. MAKE PLANS!!! I totally winged it for the whole thing, but that, combined with lack of experience, added a LOT of time to the project.

2. Take my time in the milling process. For example, i used dovetails to connect the carcass together at the corners, but I setup my jig on the one piece that had snipe on it, which resulted in my tails being very proud on ALL the other 7 corners. That was a LOT of sanding to fix.

3. This is related to number one, but i'll make sure in the future to mill everything at the same time, which would be MUCH easier with a cut list, which i did not have.

4. Use a scraper for removing glue squeeze out. There are some spots that I missed, but I got realllly lucky that most are not visible.

I also had one major mess up. For the top and bottom shelves (top of the drawer), I thought I would be so cool and do sliding dovetails for them. Man, i was such a noob. Each one wasn't even close to the same depth, etc. I ended up having to cover them with other pieces which the shelves are now connected to.

Also, I was going to go out and get knobs for the the drawer fronts, but we had some really bad weather last night

Ev

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Did you mean to attach pics to this?

Yeah, they are there now. I clicked on the link under "Help with attaching files" because I wanted to upload them all at once, but I don't see anywhere to do multiple at once besides the gallery. Unless there is a way to link a gallery to a post and I missed it..

whoops

Ev

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Good first project! and best of all you learned something, nice job.

Yeah, they are there now. I clicked on the link under "Help with attaching files" because I wanted to upload them all at once, but I don't see anywhere to do multiple at once besides the gallery. Unless there is a way to link a gallery to a post and I missed it..

whoops

Ev

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