This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Did cloudflare take down the weekly tinker threads too?
Maybe I'll move this if it ever shows up.
When last I left you I had the cases made for my bookshelves out of birch plywood.
It's been a hectic two weeks, but I managed to mill the soft maple for the faces. A two, a three, four. Also drilled all the holes for the adjustable shelf pins. Using a jig and getting those done was the most economical method over trying to install six foot rails. I couldn't find a local supplier for them, and having them shipped incured freight charges on account of their size. Plus this saves me having to route out channels for them.
I am noticing more that almost none of the pieces I cut are perfectly square. Not massively so, and you really can't tell. There is maybe a 16th an inch of wobble that some shims will take out. The floor of my basement isn't exactly perfectly flat either. But in the future, if I ever redo the cabinets in my kitchen, I think I need to invest in a tracksaw to break down the sheet goods. Also the pocket screws, despite copious clamping and jigs, still walked on me when I drilled them in, pulling the whole box slightly out of square. Once again, maybe a 32nd of an inch, but it's every joint, and those errors compound. I think in the future I'm just going to suck it up and route rabbet joints. Should invest in some route bits that are perfectly sized for plywood thicknesses.
I did a test stain of the black, and I think I hate it. Tried out a black walnut stain I have, and I like the warmness of the brown tones a lot more. Think I'm going to go with that instead. Probably also worth doing a prestain treatment because the plywood was a pretty blotchy. Probably from the manufacturing process. I swear you can see where the rollers didn't apply preasure evenly across the sheet how the stain absorbs. I also got my last sheet of plywood mostly broken down into the widths I'll need for the shelves. The side cases get 4 shelves each, the top middle gets 2 and the bottom center gets 1.
The next week I aim to get sanding done, headers and footers, and if I'm lucky all the shelves and trim pieces. I doubt I will be lucky.
A biscuit jointer is... kind of uncool, but "strong enough, perfect alignment" is sort of the whole deal with 'em -- very fast to assemble, you still need clamps and dry time though.
You know, I've been eyeballing a Makita biscuit joiner, but mostly for large panel glue ups, like table tops and such. I'm just not sure I like the idea of biscuit joining a butt joint. Although... combine it with pocket screws and it would keep things from walking I presume. But then again, I already have a doweling jig which probably also would have worked, which I didn't use because I was making an attempt at speed over obsessive accuracy on this project.
Ah well, next time maybe.
If you can hold off, the Festool Domino patent ends in June 2026. I'm hoping to buy a cheaper decent quality knockoff if Makita releases one for their LTX line then.
It's not as classy as traditional mortise and tenon, but stronger than biscuits/pocket screws and less finicky than dowels.
I will keep that in mind. I'd written off dominoes as forever out of my price range.
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