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 -
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.
I recently did some "woodworking" this last week as well... putting up light-duty shelves in my garage for storing bulky items. The shelf itself was made of 1/2" OSB plywood, with a piece of 1x2 screwed down to make a reinforcing lip. Shelves were 18" deep, 16' long. I used some cheap shelving brackets bought off Amazon and screwed them into the studs. Overall it cost me about $60 and 8 hours, not too bad for an extra 24 square feet of storage in my cramped garage.
I'm curious - what drives you to build something elaborate like that from scratch? And how do you mentally draw the line between cost/effort/time and aesthetics? I find it interesting that two people can work with their hands in a similar manner, but come at it from completely different angles. My creation ended up being all function, zero form. Even the paint job on it was a single coat, as quickly as I could do it. I can hardly imagine staining a $100 piece of wood and having to live with any errors made.
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