Im finally nearing the end of construction for a bookcase Im building for the August issue. I spent last weekend making the two dovetailed drawers for the lower case, and fit them today (they still need a little work, but hey , at least they slide into where theyre supposed to go! ).
Today I finished the finishing touches on the upper case. It has three adjustable shelves and two fixed shelves. In my SketchUp drawing, I graduated the shelf locations so the openings get smaller as the eye moves up the case. This is all great in theory and SketchUp, but I have many books and want to be able move the shelves around an inch to accommodate them. (The Complete Christopher Marlowe is a couple inches taller than The Norton Shakespeare, and who knows what will end up where?!)
So, I had to make a jig to accurately locate the adjustable shelf pin holes , one where I laid the shelves out in my drawing, and a hole 3 cm above and 3 cm below. Sure, I could have used peg board, but we dont have any in the shop. So, I cut a 15 cmx23 cm piece of
I then marked the center hole location for each shelf on both sides of the case, and used the big hole in the middle of the jig to position it to the case sides, aligning the lines in the jigs hole with the line on the case side. After clamping it down, I slipped a stop collar on top of a 1/10 cm drill bits and was done. Although a shelf-pin isn’t very sexy, it was my first time building a jig. (Warren Hacker, if youre reading this, Im sorry.)
