About : american furniture tv stands
Title : american furniture tv stands
american furniture tv stands
marc:the wood whispereris brought to you by: powermatic, the goldstandard since 1921 and by rockler woodworking andhardware, create with confidence. on today's show we're going to make a simple and elegant wall shelf. so simple in fact that youcan make it in a weekend. that's why i call itthe weekend wall shelf. (groovy brass music) one of my favorite thingsabout being a woodworker
is what i like to call the utility factor. what i mean by that is theability to make things for the home for family and friendsthat can actually be used. there's a lot of hobbies outthere and a lot of places we can spend our moneythat don't yield anything, it's just fun, it's just something we do for recreation but the final the product, there really is no finalproduct, let's put it that way. woodworking isn't like that.
with woodworking we canactually make stuff that people can use and thatcan enrich our lives. this particular project isone that nicole requested. there's no reason to overcomplicate it, despite that being part of my nature. i always want to put morestuff into a project but the reality is sometimes a wallshelf can just be a wall shelf, it doesn't have to bethis groundbreaking thing. we don't really have topush the limits of our
personal abilities inevery single project. that's what this one is going to be, more of an exercise inrestraint than anything else. let's dive right in. this wall shelf was inspired by a few pictures i found online. it features a thick backboneand three individual shelves that increase in length withthe widest at the bottom. while it's not the same style as the
trestle table we builtrecently it is made from the same wood and looksgreat next to the desk. keep in mind with ashelf unit like this you don't necessarily need tofollow my measurements. the joy of this project is that you can customize it to fitwherever you want it to go. you need your shelves tobe a little bit deeper? that's no problem at all. you want to change thedimensions of the top,
middle or bottom shelf?no problem there either. the one thing i wouldrecommend though is that you keep the back verticalpiece pretty thick. you want it to be thicker thanthe shelf material because all of our support iscoming from that back unit, and when we make those dadosin there we don't want to compromise the structure byremoving too much material. a nice thick back verticalmember is definitely recommended. my material is already milled.
if you need help with thatprocess go back into the archive to one of our earlier episodes,the jointer's jumpin', i go over the entire millingprocess in that episode. my stock, a couple of my pieces here still need to be cut to lengthso let's head over to the chop saw and we'll get that done. i've already cut one end square. then i measure over 24 inches because this is for my middle shelf.
put a pencil line, then i line up my pencil line with the laser. i'll tell you, frankly i'vegot mixed feeling about lasers. sometimes i think they're ridiculous and other times they come in handy. (sawing) each of our shelves is goingto sit in a 3/4 inch deep dado that we need to cutinto our back support piece. there are literally hundreds of different
ways that you could cut that dado. the one we're going touse involves the use of a handheld router, a patternbit and a specialized jig that's going to allow us tocut a dado of any particular size and get it right thefirst time, every time. let's check it out. here is my jig. obviously this one is significantly oversized. the truth is this particularjig serves two purposes.
not only can i use it for dados in this project but its original intent was to be used at the table saw to create coves. i did a video on this inthe past for the guild, and then i then i showed howto make this particular jig. since i'm reusing the jig forthis project i figured let me show you the clip of howto actually make this one. keep in mind that whenyou make yours if you're really just making it forcreating dados it can be
made on a much smaller scale and you can really simplify things. in fact i think i'll throw a few links to some free plans on theweb for very similar jigs that are built on a smaller scale. if you want one that alsodoes coves at the table saw, which is handy, check this clip out and you'll know how to make one. i'm disassembling the old jig to give you
a general idea of how it was constructed. removing the knobs allows meto remove the connecting rails. notice it's a pretty tight fit. the bolts are easily removedand notice that on the bottom of the jig i createda recess so that the head of the bolt sits below thebottom surface of the jig. if you don't do this the bolt will scratch your table saw top. now let's build a new version of the jig.
i start by making two four inch wide rails from some baltic birch. consider ripping a third piecefor other parts of the jig. with the two pieces ganged together i trim one end flush and thencarefully flip the pieces around and trim them tofinal length, 54 inches. keep in mind that yourcutoffs from this step could also be usedlater on in the process. my cutoffs weren't longenough so i needed to rip
a third piece of balticbirch for this step. i'm cutting the smallfour inch by two inch pieces that go under the connecting rails. to make quick work of it i use a pencil line on the saw surface as a guide. if you're careful to put thework piece up to the line the same way every single timethis is remarkably accurate. i cut eight pieces this way. now we need to drill the bolt holes in
the dead center of the small blocks. i simply draw a couple lines corner to corner to find the exact center. at the drill press i set up my fence and stop block so that i canmake a repeatable hole. i drill all eight pieces this way. now we need to make thetwo connecting rails. mine are 13 inches longand 1 1/2 inches wide. using the adjustable square i mark
a line one inch in from each edge. then i mark the centerpoint of that line which is approximately threequarters of an inch. using the drill press and a stop block again i setup for repeatable drilling. each end of both connectingrails is drilled this way. now i need to mark thelocations of the support blocks. i mark a line in two inches from the edge of one of the long rails.
using my line for referencei use glue and a couple of brad nails to secure the support block. instead of measuring on the other side and drawing a line i wanta more accurate way of ensuring exact spacingon both of my rails. i use a scrap piece of plycut to 46 inches as a guide. i rest the other supportblock right against the guide and secureit with glue and brads. repeat the process for the second rail.
i need to use the holesin the support blocks as guides for drilling allthe way through the rails. then i use a forstner bit to create the recesses for the bolt heads. with the bolts insertedwe can assemble the jig. regardless of whetheryou build this exact jig or something more specificfor making dados the process is really goingto be the same thing. let's start with laying out the
locations of each of our dados. our bottom shelf is goingto be located four inches up from the very bottomof the back support. let's put a line at four inches. to make sure it's niceand square to my sides ... extend the line like so. we don't actually have toput the other line because remember, with the jig, thework piece is going to show us where the other side ofthat dado is going to be.
just draw the starting points. the second shelf is located17 inches up from the bottom. our top shelf is located 28inches up from the bottom, or approximately sixinches down from the top. the key to this wholething working properly is this little guy called a pattern bit. let me show you up close. the pattern bit is one of myabsolute favorite router bits, i use these guys all the time in the shop.
the magic here is this little bearing right above the cutter head. really this is nothingmore than a straight router bit with aperfectly-sized bearing that's exactly even with the edgeof the cutter head itself. this way if you have your jigor some sort of a guide along your pencil line here and yourun the router bit across, as long as this bearing is contacting your guide you're going to get a perfect cut,
perfectly even with whereveryou place your guide. that's why we put the guide even with the pencil line and make a couple passes and we should have a perfectly-sized dado. let's get into the details ofthat, let's setup the jig now. let me give you a quick overview of the setup that i'm going to use here. first of all the back support piece is clamped firmly to the work bench.
i've got one in the front,two clamps in the back, this puppy is not going anywhere. the jig is laid approximately at one of the dados that you're going to cut. i'm going to start in the middle because that's the easiest onefor me to film for you but you could do anyone of the three really. place it approximatelywhere it needs to go, don't worry about lining it up perfectly.
one of the disadvantages ofhaving this really long jig is the fact that it's alittle bit tipsy like that. i've got a couple ofsupports, put these here. the other reason youwant these supports is because when we putclamping pressure to secure the jig to the work pieceyou can't put clamping pressure right herewhere we really want it, because obviously if we have clamps here the router isn't going to make it.
what i like to do is clamp a little bit further to the outsideand the only way we can do that is if we havesupports that are the same thickness as the materialwe're cutting into. the other thing i haveare these low profile clamps and a littlecaul and that's going to allow me to spread the clamping pressure. of course i want to clampright over that support. these are very easy to use.
just like so. let's line everything up perfectly and then we can make our first cut. all of our shelves arethe same thickness so i'm going to use the smallest one for this to make it a little bit easier to handle. i'm going to drop this down in between our two parts of our jighere, bring this other end in here like so,so it's nice and tight.
in fact it doesn't hurtat this point to add a clamp in here, just alittle temporary clamp. that will make sure nothing moves, it's really held nice and tight. one at a time, since if i released both of these clamps the the whole jig could move. i'm going to release oneat a time very carefully. on this side i'm going to loosenthe clamp, adjust the caul, tighten it down again.
same process on the other side. we're going to tighten the jig. carefully loosen our clamp and caul here. now we're covering both sidesand we can tighten it down. now all i need to do isremove the quick clamp, take our shelf out. weshould be ready to go. the final depth of our dado is going to be three quarters of an inch. that's a lot of material to remove so
resist the temptation toset this all the way down and plow that entire threequarters in one shot, that would be a very bad idea. the quality of the cutis going to be bad and it puts a heck of a lot ofstress on a bit like this. what i recommend doingis at least two passes, go for three if you can. we can also set our routerup here to make this process a little bit easierusing our turret stops.
i start here by plungingdown until the bit, the bottom of the bit here,contacts the surface of the work, and tighten it down.this is our zero point. what we know is if we gothree quarters of an inch down from this point we'llbe at the right depth, because we're right now sittingright on top of the surface. loosen the bar here, and make sure it contacts one of your turret stops. this little arm is an adjustment arm that
allows us to gauge the depth of cut. let me show you how this is going to work. it's on zero right now andthis bar is touching the turret stop here so we knowthis is the zero point. if we raise this up to threequarters of an inch, and this is metric here so i'm goingto go with 19 millimeters. right about there. tighten this arm down. now the distance betweenthe turret stop and
the plunge bar here is three quarters of an inch or 19 millimetersso when i plunge down, once i finally bottom out we should be at our full three quarter inch depth. before i make my actual cut the last thing i want to mention is the directionality. because the bit's rotating in a particular direction sometimes ifyou go the wrong way, and i know some of youhave experienced this,
the router can take offon you, because you're pushing it in the samedirection as the rotation. you want to really workagainst that rotation. the way we do it is inthis particular situation i'm going to be pushingthe router up against this back guide andgoing from left to right. once i'm all the way throughthe cut i'm now going to be pushing on my front guide over here and i'm going to begoing from right to left.
that should ensure that i'malways making a cut against the direction of the bitas opposed to what is known as a climb cut which tendsto get away from you. we're going to take about aquarter inch on this first pass. (grinding) down another quarter inch. now we bottom out and that shouldbe the full three quarters. the moment of truth, let's see how we did. very nice.
i've got two more dadosto do this exact same way but as you can see thisis a really handy jig. it doesn't matter what thethickness of this work piece is, it doesn't have to be exactlythree quarters of an inch. with a jig like that ican make the adjustment and get a perfectlyfitting dado every time. just because i want you guysto have as many tricks up your sleeve as possible letme show you one more thing. you can buy these patternbits in different diameters,
this one happens to be exactlythree quarters of an inch. all you would really need todo, instead of messing with the jig that we were using earlier,is take any straight edge. just a piece of scrap,whatever you've got on hand. clamp it down right against your line, and run this piece in one pass. one pass will give you an exactthree quarter inch wide dado. here's where the problem is. if you don't have absolutecontrol over the thickness of
your shelf stock this is goingto be hard because you don't know that you're exactlythree quarters of an inch. but if you've got a planeror a drum sander or you're handy with your hand planesand you can finesse this to be the exact thicknessto get a perfect fit you can always use one ofthese pattern bits and just a straight edge to makethe job that much simpler. with all three dados cutwe can start to think about some of theinteresting and cool things
we might want to do to this back support. you could certainly just keep it square, a nice long rectanglelike this if you want to. you could introduce curves if you want to. nothing that you do tothis is going to affect the fit of those shelvesso use your imagination. for me i'm doing something verystraightforward and simple. i just want to echo thesense of how the shelves are getting narrower as we gofrom the bottom to the top.
i want to echo that in this back piece, starting with the full eightinch width at the bottom and ending with, i think,six inches wide at the top. we need to introduce a taper to each side. that's very easy to do,we're just going to draw a line one inch in fromeach edge at the top. place a mark here. do one this side. now i simply line up a straightedge with the very bottom
corner here and bring thetop over to my one inch line. draw all the way across. of course on the other sidewe'll do the same thing. there are lots of ways thatyou can cut this taper. i think the most obvious one that comes to mind is using a taperingjig at the table saw. i actually don't have a tapering jig that size that can handle a piece like this and frankly i don'tfeel like building one.
it's sunday, i'm feeling lazy. i'm just going to use my bandsaw to do it. the bandsaw, if you have itsetup properly it should track pretty true and if you justtake your time you could follow your line and justleave a little material there. we'll go back to the bench and we'll use hand planes, sanders,whatever you have on hand. you could even take thisback to the jointer if you wanted to to clean up thatedge and give you a nice,
straight, clean edge all the way up. that cut is pretty darnstraight and i still have my pencil line as a guideso i can sight down. i can sight down and use ablock plane to knock down any high spots and just eventhings out as good as i can. that's looking pretty good. once it's relatively flat, of course now let's take a step back. if you've got a numberseven or a number eight
jointer plane you can just run it straight across and get a nice dead flat surface. the thing is, as longas you're pretty close to your pencil line youcan just jump right to your smoothing plane because the truth is, this being absolutelydead on flat and true isn't really necessary,it's a decorative edge. we're not jointing this to anything else. once it's pretty flat you can come
back with your smoothing plane. (scraping) and that will help youmake a few final passes to smooth out any of the milling marks. if hand planes aren't your thing don't forget you can always use a sander. i've got a six inch randomorbit sander and i'm going to be very careful as i sandthis edge to make sure i don't lean it one way or the other,which is very easy to do.
that's why a sander reallyisn't the ideal choice for this but you've got the oneadvantage of not having to worry about grain direction, and ifyou're not real good with your hand tools this is a reasonableway to get the job done. the final treatment for boththe back support and my shelves involves the creation of alittle chamfer along the edge. it continues this themeof angles and more harsh lines than i normally bringinto things that i build. i like curves, but this isone thing where i'm committed
to more straight, geometricalharsh lines on this one. i'm continuing the theme by creating the chamfer all the way across the edge. the back support gets thischamfer on all four sides. i'm going to use the tablesaw to do the two long edges. the top and bottom we're probably going to have to do those by handbut that's no problem, it's a small amount of material. i'm going to set the saw uphere for about a 65 degree cut.
to get a 65 degree cut i need to bring my saw to 25 on my gauge. for my shelves i'mgoing to leave the blade right where it is but iadjust my fence so that this chamfer comes inand leaves me about an eight of an inch of straightstock here at the top. i don't want to go all the wayto make a really sharp point. that looks pretty good. of course i can't cut thesides here using the fence,
that's just too dangerous. i'm going to use my miter gauge. flip the piece around like this. turn it upside down so that the angle is now working in our favor here. and i should be able tojust carefully make a cut. in fact i may just use a clamp to prevent this from sliding back and forth at all. we still need to bevel this area here and
i'm just going to usemy block plan to do it. of course i can give myself a few visual references that will help. first of all i've got my adjustable square and i want to know the distance between the top of this bevel and the side here. i'm going to get that as close as i can. and put that line on the top. that's my top guideline.
i want another guidelineon the end grain and all i need to do is connect the dots here with the two lower portions of this bevel. block plane should makequick work of this. i'm starting to get close tomy line back here so i may want to lay off until i'm a littlebit closer on the end grain. tilt the plain a little bit this way. looks good. now it's time for everybody's
favorite part of woodworking: sanding. of course we do need to sandthe entire surface of every shelf and also the backpiece just to make sure that the finish comes out thebest that it possibly can. without a good clean sandedsurface all those flaws and errors will become very visible once you hit them with finish. we have a lot of bevels here and you don't really want to hit that with the
random orbit sander becauseyou'll round them over. i use a hand sanding block for that and i take everything up to 180. for the flat areas no problemwith the random orbit sander, that's what i'm going to use. and i'll also bringthat surface up to 180. let me put my dust mask on and i've got about a half hour of sanding here to do. (scratching)
sanding is done. we can now do a littledry assembly which is pretty straight forward,just drop the shelves in. everything looks pretty good. to do the glue up on this we need to have a couple things in place ahead of time. first of all we need to know when our shelves are perfectly centered. typically i would use pencillines for that but i don't
want to put a pencil lineon a surface i just sanded. that's one concern. thesecond thing is squeeze out. if there's any glue thatcomes out and over onto the surface it would be nice tohave some protection there. blue tape to the rescue. a nice strip along the bottom here. push it right up against theshelf and then fold it down. perfect. we can add a significantamount of strength
to these shelves if we screw them in. normally i wouldn't do this if it was something that i wouldbe able to see but this thing is going to be mounted on the wall. the screw heads in the back, you'll never see them soas long as they're below the surface they won'tinterfere with anything. the way that we're going to do this is by starting the drilling from the front.
there's two. your screws should be able to fall right in like that. it's not a bad idea toback this material up when you do that initial drillingto avoid any tearout. i do have a little bit oftearout here but i'm going to countersink and that's going toget rid of most of it anyway. before we add our glue anddrive those screws home we need to make sure thatwe pre-drill our shelf. with three quarter inchstock like this if we
just drive one of these screws straight in without pre-drillingbad things can happen. we could very well split these boards. i want to make sure i get a bit that's just under the size of my screw itself, follow the hole that's already there and clear out some material. i'm going to use titebond extendwhich gives me a little bit more working time. get plentyof glue here in the dado.
let's see if we can'tcarefully flip this guy over. make sure we're all lined up. a little wax never hurt anyone. certainly helps that screw go in easier. i removed the tape fromthe joints and even though the glue isn't completely dry yet it's okay for me to start finishing it. the screws are holdingeverything in place and i did give it about ahalf hour, 45 minutes up
to this point to letthe glue start to set. time to start talking about the finish. for me, finish of choiceon this one is going to be general finish's arm-r-seal,surprise, surprise. you guys probably knowby now that i put that on maybe 80 or 90 percent ofthe projects that i do. this particular shelf is going right above a desk that i just made.that desk received several coats of arm-r-seal soit's a good idea to use
the same finish soeverything looks the same. if you need a little bit moreinformation and more detail on this type of a wipe onvarnish finish check out my dvd. it's "a simple varnish finish" and you can find that at the wood whisperer store. for the most part a simplevarnish finish is an apt name because it actually isa relatively simple process, but sometimes you need to see all the steps and all the details.
that's what the dvd is there for. i just have one of my rags here. i'm going to take some ofmy well-mixed satin finish. remember that satin hasthose flatteners in there. if you don't mix it you're going to wind up with a streaky finish. pour the finish into thesecondary container here so i don't contaminate my stock,and we just start applying. remember the good thing is onthis first coat you can be as
messy as you want because thewood is very, very thirsty. it's going to pull atthat finish right into the fibers so you don't haveto be too careful about it. i just love how an oil-based finish brings that mahogany to life, it's gorgeous. now with the top here you'vegot a decision to make. do you let the finish go into the dado? normally if we were gluing,absolutely not. the finish is going to cause us problemswith the adhesion of the glue.
in this case i'm not using glue so i really need it to be a tight fit. use your judgement. if yourshelf is fitting in perfectly with absolutely no flawsand no space whatsoever you might want to avoidgetting finish in there. maybe just one very lightcoat like this and wipe out the excess to makesure that it doesn't build, but you're sealing the wood fibers. if you have a little bit of a loose fit,
well maybe this is theopportunity to take advantage of the finish and buildup a little bit of a film so it helps to tightenthings up a little bit. in my case it's a pretty tightfit so i don't want to put too much finish here, justenough to seal those fibers. of course don't forget toapply finish to the back. it's going up againstthe wall but you still want to make sure youget some finish on there. after four coats of asatin wiping varnish our
wall-hanging shelf is ready to be hung. let's take this top shelf out so we can talk about how we're going to anchor it. you really want to give thissome serious thought because unless you have a stud toput this into this is quite a bit of weight to have tosupport with drywall alone. fortunately there are thingsout there that you can use that will do that butyou need to do some research. the first thing i looked atwas a standard toggle bolt.
a toggle bolt is nothingmore than a standard bolt that is put through thislittle spring-loaded toggle. you drill a hole in the wall, pop this guy through and once that'sin the inner cavity (click) it pops open andnow you can tighten it up. those arms spread up and stop the toggle from coming back through,it's one way only. the problem is to get thefull benefit of the support of this you're going to need tohave the toggle be vertical.
if it's horizontal you're not going to get as much weight capacity out of that. i think it would still beenough for this project. i mean this piece itself, the shelf itself weighs about 16 pounds,so it's not going to get significantly heavierthan that just by putting some dvds or cds or littlefigurines or whatever the heck nicole is going to put on there. but i never usuallysettle for good enough.
i like to overkill, especiallywhen it comes to the possibility of somethingfalling off of my wall. i looked around and i found in lowes they had this product,it's called -- whoops. it's called wingits. what makes this different is the fact, number one it's plastic, butthe primary thing is the fact that it's got these threearms instead of just two. now when this goes intothe wall and you start
tightening it up you've gotthree arms spreading out, (pop) which means regardless ofwhich orientation this is in you're going to get awhole lot more support because it's spreadingout in three directions. the company rates theseat 300 pounds a piece. if i've got two of thesein my wall i sure as heck hope that that'senough to support this. this is what i'm going touse and it all starts by drilling a couple holes intothe back of the dado there.
this will go in the wall and this piece here is going to sit flush. what i need to be able to do is get this bolt through the shelf unit itself. all we need to do is drilla couple holes that are just a little bit biggerthan the size of that bolt. let's get started. (upbeat blues piano) the next thing i need to dois make sure i know where the
location of these bolt headsare so that i could remove a little extra stock onthe back of this top shelf. this way everything willbe seated perfectly. actually the easiest way todo this, very low tech, is put my shelf in, take my drill andjust drill through the back. just enough to make a mark, i don't really want to drill through it. my rasp should do a fine job of it. a little sanding just to smooth it out.
not that anyone will ever see it. then hit it with a little bit of finish. a simple and elegant wallshelf that only takes a couple days to build,and if you're lucky like me it will knock another thingoff that honey-do list. thanks for watching. (sultry jazz music) (woman singing)