[ Saw whirs, theme music plays ] It's time to break free from the boring boxes for bookcases -- you know, the stuff that you get in a box that's all flat-packed.

You got to put it together with a handful of dowels, some screws, and illegible instructions.

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're building this bookcase.

And obviously the thing that sets it apart is the arched top.

Now, where would you find a bookcase like this?

To me, it's something that you'd find in the library of some learned lady.

And what we're gonna be doing here is breaking this down into three sections.

There's a main, rectangular case.

That's the part that I'm gonna to take care of.

Think of it more of like an assist, the no-look pass for Chris, who's gonna come in and make the arched top here and then wrap it with veneer so it has this seamless look all the way across.

Logan's gonna come in and close out the whole episode, adding the drawer at the bottom and then the shapely feet on there that help give this project a little bit of a lift.

If you're ready to build along, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So let's build.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

♪♪ And by... Kreg, from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

♪♪ Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business.

It's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.

[ Theme music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ The interior of our bookcase is made up of five pieces of plywood.

There's two long sides -- I have one of them here -- and then three shelves.

They're joined together with some pretty essential types of joints.

We're gonna use dadoes for the most part.

Later on we'll add a few rabbets to help seal things up.

One thing I want to point out is that on plywood, there's usually a good side and a not-as-good side on the piece.

So on this one, for example, I have really nice, straight grain.

Really like the look of this.

If I flip it over, you can see I have more of the cathedral shapes.

It's not bad, but it's not the best.

So I'm gonna put this on the outside.

It's gonna get covered up with veneer anyway.

And then the inside will have the nice look on it.

For the joinery, I'm using a 1/4-inch dado blade that's installed in the table saw here.

So the first thing that I'm gonna do is cut a dado on the top and the bottom.

Then I'll reposition the rip fence and cut another dado that will define the drawer compartment.

With the joinery complete for the shelves, there are a few other details we need to take care of.

One is along the top end of each of the sides, I'm gonna form a tongue that will allow the curved section to just click into place.

I'm gonna do that with a dado blade again.

But here the dado blade is a little wider, and you'll notice there's an auxiliary fence attached to the rip fence.

What this does is allow me to really fine-tune the exposure of the blade here to get it exactly the right size that I need.

So I'll make a pass across both faces of the side piece and form a narrower tongue.

After that, I'm gonna move the fence over a little bit, raise the dado blade to create a wider rabbet along the back edge of each of the pieces that will hold the back panel later on.

All right.

We're done with the sides.

Now we want to take care of the joinery details on our three horizontal pieces.

So you can see them here -- top, middle, and bottom.

And I've labeled those because I want to keep the nice-looking face inward on our case piece.

So as I'm gonna cut a tongue using the dado blade here on each end to fit into those dadoes that I did earlier.

The other thing that I've done is I've put an "X" on the face that I want down on the table saw so that I know that the pieces are gonna be in their proper orientation.

So a little bit of time spent in orienting your parts here is gonna pay off in big dividends when you go to assemble the case and have everything look the way that you want it.

It's really tempting here to want to get the glue bottle and the clamps and start putting this thing together.

But you want to stop for a moment and go through and check the fit of each of the tongues into the dadoes that they're gonna fit in to make sure that you can get those in once the glue goes on.

So on some of them, I ended up having to use a shoulder plane here and trim the edge.

Now, you want to watch the grain direction, 'cause sometimes you'll have to pull the plane towards you, sometimes you'll push it away from you to trim it, and then look for a nice, easy fit.

At this point, now you can get the glue out.

So what I'm gonna do is run a thin bead of glue in each one of the dadoes, and then I'm gonna brush on some glue right at the junction of the shoulder on the ends of the shelf pieces here.

Fit those into the dadoes.

And the key thing here is that you want those pieces flush with the rabbet on the back edge of the piece.

So once you get those three in, then you can add glue to the opposite side.

Flip that into place.

You want to just pull the joints tight.

Double-check for square and then walk away.

You want to give the case here a good few hours for it to dry.

Before we go any farther on the project, I want to pause a moment and drill some shelf-pin holes to hold the two adjustable shelves that are gonna go on the inside of the case.

You can really do this almost any time, even before assembly, but I like having the two -- the top and then this middle shelf -- in place, 'cause I'm gonna use it to register the piece.

Now, it's really easy to go overboard on adjustable shelves and pepper the whole inside full of holes.

But to be honest, you're never gonna put an adjustable shelf way up near the top or way near the bottom.

So what I'm gonna do instead is I made a small spacer that I can register off the top of the bookcase... then put my jig right up against it.

Then I'll drill a series of five or six holes here.

Then I'll move the spacer down to the bottom end of the bookcase, register the jig, and do the same thing.

Now, don't forget, you got to do the same thing on the back side of the bookcase and on the opposite side piece.

For the last part on the case here as it stands, I'm gonna add strips of hardwood to the front of the shelves.

Now, I've taken care of the top one already and also the one down here on the bottom.

What these do is bring the shelves flush with the sides of the case.

Later on, a face frame gets added to the vertical pieces, but that's not until Chris adds the arched top.

What I'm looking for is the edging to be flush with the surface here.

So I can adjust that as I get the clamps in place.

Now, while the glue dries here, I can turn this over to Chris and he can add the arched top.

With the basic cabinet done, it's time for the fun part.

And that is creating the arched top.

A lot of different ways you can make an arch.

What we're going to do is use this product.

This is called bending plywood.

And you can see it's very flexible.

It has three plies -- one very thin in the center and two thicker on the exterior sides.

It's a fantastic material to use for all sorts of applications, like this.

Now, one great thing is this is 3/8 inch thick, so two sheets of it bonded together, it's 3/4 inch, and that will marry perfectly with the sides of our cabinet.

Now, to create the bend, what do we need to do?

Well, I've built this MDF form, and we're gonna take our sheets of bending board, apply glue in between, and we're gonna clamp this down, and we're gonna create the arch for our cabinet.

It's a fun process.

You should give it a try sometime.

So to start, we're gonna spread some glue.

There are a lot of different glues you can use.

You can use epoxy.

You can use water-based glues.

Epoxy is a pretty good choice because it gives you plenty of time and it's kind of slippery.

I'm a little bit old school in that when I do a glue-up, I kind of feel like there should be a sense of panic, and so I am, of course, using water-based glue.

And it's easy to clean up.

But we'll have plenty of time.

I want to make sure we get a pretty good, heavy coat on, because this is a very porous material, and it's gonna soak up quite a bit of the glue.

And by applying a slightly thicker coat, I'm actually gonna get a little bit more open time, so there won't be a panic.

There are different sorts of water-based glues.

This is a little faster-drying variety.

And I wanted that not because I want the speed so much as it's a little bit stiffer and less flexible when dry.

And that means I'm gonna get a little less springback when we take this out of the clamps.

All right.

I think that's got it.

Let's get this thing on the form now.

All right.

So the first clamp is kind of the fussiest.

What we want to do is make sure that our two pieces are centered on the form and are not twisted, because that is gonna matter later, when we trim things up.

So we want the parts centered and true.

Now, I'm starting with a ratchet clamp.

I'm gonna go ahead and add another ratchet clamp and a couple of these pony strap clamps.

And we'll finish off with some boards on the end.

All right.

And there we go.

So now a little patience.

We're gonna let the glue set, preferably a couple of days, to make sure it's thoroughly dry.

Then we'll pop this out of the mold and be ready to go to the table saw and start our joinery work.

Well, our arch is out of the clamps, and you can see it glued up pretty well.

So what now?

First off, I'm gonna go ahead and cut it to its final width.

And when that's done, I'm gonna be putting some panels on each side and just tacking them on temporarily to help me line things up with the saw blade and the fence so that I can cut the bottom of the arch, which is the springing point, nice and neatly.

And from there, we'll be all ready to put a little veneer on the inside of it.

Well, with the arch all trimmed up, what we need to do now is apply veneer to the inside.

Because once this goes on the cabinet, well, it's gonna be tough.

So we'll go ahead and put our veneer on now.

I've got a nice piece of this paper-backed cherry veneer that we'll be using on the outside of our cabinet.

And to adhere it, I'm using contact cement.

But I'm using contact cement that is water-based and specifically for veneer work.

Easiest way to apply contact cement is just to use a small roller.

So I'm just using a little trim roller here.

You can brush it on, but a roller is really a lot better.

The bending board is very porous, so I want to make sure I get plenty of glue on, and I want to make sure I have plenty of glue along the edges so that our veneer is well bonded.

All right.

I think that's got it.

So now we wait about 25 minutes or so, half an hour, and I'll be ready to place the veneer on the inside of our arch.

Well, the contact cement is ready to go.

I've got some pieces of paper, which I've draped over the edges of our arch, and that's just gonna make things a little easier for me so that I can start in the center with my veneer and not worry about it sticking up here until I'm ready.

This is a pretty generously sized piece of veneer, so I actually have a lot of latitude here.

But nonetheless, we want to make sure we're nicely centered, good overlaps.

And now I'm committed.

So we'll start.

Pressing it down.

All right.

So I'll continue to go over this piece, pressing it down, making sure it's fully adhered.

We'll get it trimmed up, and we'll go to the router table and start cutting some joinery.

Moving along with our top.

Next up, we're at the router table, and I need to cut a slot on the bottom of each leg of our arch here.

And that slot is gonna mate with the tenon on the sides of the cabinets that Phil built.

So I have a slotting bit in the router table.

We're gonna go take care of that.

Then I'm gonna swap out bits to a 1/2-by-1/2 rabbeting bit, because I need to put a rabbet all along the back edge of our arch for the back of the cabinet.

Because we've already done that on the case, we got to do that on the arch.

Well, it is time to glue the arch on the cabinet.

A little bit of prep work, though.

First off, I've strategically located two band clamps down at the bottom of this cabinet so that they're ready to put over our arch when it gets in place.

Second, you'll see green tape on both the arch and on the cabinet.

And that is to prevent glue squeeze-out from reaching our nice cherry veneer.

It's a tough little corner to get into, so I thought it was worth a little bit of prevention.

I want to make sure that I'm flush up front here, since that will make applying the fascia much easier.

Okay.

Well, it's time for the fun, albeit a little stressful, part of the project.

We're gonna take a 12-foot ribbon of veneer, and we're gonna go all the way around our cabinet.

Now, I've used our water-based contact cement like we used for the interior of the arch.

And I've got a coat on the outside of the cabinet and a coat on our veneer.

What we're gonna do is I'm gonna start on this end.

And what we have to do is start right.

And by that, I mean we need to make sure that our veneer is exactly parallel with the edge of our cabinet so that when we get all the way to the other end of the cabinet, the veneer isn't running off, it's all running true.

'Cause if it's gonna run off, well, weeping and gnashing of teeth, right?

There's not much to be done.

So I'm gonna start here.

I'm gonna grab another pair of hands, who's gonna hold the veneer out on the other end.

And we're gonna make sure that that lower edge is just touching our workbench.

And that's why I've got these spacers underneath.

That's gonna center the veneer.

So it actually should go really well and pretty easy.

I'll rub the veneer down with my hand.

I've also got a little piece of Masonite here with a rounded edge that's gonna help me kind of push it down, make sure it's fully adhered.

And I think it's gonna go fine and in a couple minutes, we're gonna have a veneered cabinet.

With the veneer in place, it's time for me to grab a palm router, trim it all flush, smooth up my edges, and hand this project over to Logan.

♪♪ So now that Chris has the veneer finished up on the outside of this bookcase, we have a couple of things to take care of.

The first is to hide this plywood edge.

And we're gonna do that with some hardwood edging.

Now, obviously these straight runs are pretty easy.

I simply have hardwood that's ripped to width.

It's a little extra long.

We'll cut it to length before we install it.

But those are easy to take care of.

This curved top is a little different, though.

What I have here is I have some pieces that are extra wide, and I mitered the ends at the table saw.

I simply cut these to 30-degree ends, three pieces, and these combined are gonna give us enough width to make up this edging.

So what I'm gonna do is clamp everything here in place, get it positioned where I want it, and then I'm gonna use these pieces and use the case as my guide.

I'm gonna scribe the outside shape, and then I'll bring a trammel in and position that here on the top shelf.

And then I'll swing that arc all the way around, and that's gonna give me two layout lines on each of these three pieces.

Then we can head over to the bandsaw and cut those out.

Now, after trimming this upper molding at the bandsaw, I went ahead and smoothed out the inside curve with files, sandpapers, and a drum sander.

The outside, though, I wanted to wait until I got it mounted to the case.

And I simply came through after it was attached with a flush trim bit on the router and trimmed that up nice and neat.

There's a little fine tuning I can do with some sandpaper, but we'll do that at the very end.

Now I can install this last piece of trim.

And all I'm doing here is applying a bead of glue along this edge.

Then I'm using a couple of pin nails kind of as clamps, just to hold it in place while that glue cures.

The feet of this bookcase start off as blocks, like this.

This is a little chunky-looking, so we want to slim this down.

And to do that, I've already cut a half template.

So this template has a curve along one edge that will actually be cut on all four sides of these feet.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to line this template up with the block and then mark that curve.

Then I'll flip that template over and mark the other side.

And that gives us the shape of our foot.

Now, I have to mark this on two faces because we want this to taper in all four directions.

Okay.

There we go.

So now I have that shape on two sides.

The secret here is that I also need a roll of blue painter's tape.

This is gonna allow me to first cut one profile in one orientation, and then I'm gonna take those waste blocks and tape them back in place.

Once I tape them back in place, that gives me a flat reference so I can cut that other face of this foot.

With the feet cut out on the bandsaw, I went ahead and sanded them smooth with the drum sander.

The key here is to make sure that these facets start at the same point on each side so it doesn't look lumpy.

Now I've mounted this onto a piece of plywood that has edging all the way around.

This allows me to screw the feet in from the top side, and now I can attach everything to the bottom of the bookcase with screws.

You notice I didn't put any glue in here, and this is for a very particular reason.

If for some reason one of these feet would ever break off or need replaced, by having this just screwed in place, I can remove it and reattach a new foot.

I'm not expecting that to happen, but it is kind of future-proofing.

Now, the last piece to this bookcase-shaped puzzle is gonna be a drawer that fits in that bottom cubby.

Now, I've already cut the parts to size here.

We have two short sides, and we have a longer front and back.

And then we are going to face the entire thing with a piece of cherry.

Now, on a project that is big and beautiful, like this bookcase, usually I'd use dovetails for the drawers 'cause they look really nice and they're a mechanical joint.

But with this being a bookcase, that drawer's probably not gonna get opened very often.

So a simple tongue-and-dado joint is gonna work really well for that.

Now, what I've done here is I've loaded up a 1/4-inch-wide grooving blade at the table saw, and I've set the fence 1/2 inch from this outside edge of the blade.

With this setup, I can create two parts of this joint.

First, I can cut a groove for the bottom in all of these parts.

And then, in the sides, I can cut the dado that's gonna capture the tongue.

that's gonna be on the fronts and backs.

Now we can go ahead and cut the tongues that are on that front and back.

And to do that, I've installed this auxiliary fence.

This is just a scrap of plywood held to the rip fence here.

And this is so I can scooch that fence right up to the edge of the blade or even bury the edge of that blade.

I'm gonna cut that tongue on the fronts and backs of this drawer.

Now that I've given this drawer a little bit of time to dry, we can go ahead and install it in the case.

I've already taken care of the slides in here.

You can see those are mounted on these little filler blocks that are just attached to the outside of the case.

And to position the slides, I just used a scrap of hardboard I had laying around, and I slipped that under there before I screwed those to the side.

And I've positioned the slides on the drawer box so that when they're fully retracted, the false front that we're gonna add in a minute is gonna be flush with these top and bottom fillers in that bottom shelf.

So now let's slip this in place.

There we go.

And I've put a couple of ears of blue painter's tape on here just so that when I close that, I can open this as I'm test-fitting and see how that operates.

It looks like it's a pretty good fit.

So now we have to install this false front.

And this false front is sized so it's just slightly smaller than this opening here.

And to attach it, we're gonna use double-sided tape.

And we'll pull that drawer out just for a little bit of room while we're attaching that false front.

[ Drill buzzing ] Now, the final thing is to take this hardware hole all the way through the inside.

Now we can pop that knob in place... ...and see how that drawer fits.

There we go.

It's a perfect fit.

So now just a little bit of sanding and a finish.

♪♪ Well, here we are at the end, and you can see the completed version of our bookcase alongside the one that originally appeared in the magazine, showing off the stark difference between having a stained piece of cherry furniture and what cherry looks like fresh off the saw, so to speak.

Now, over time, this piece will develop a much richer, redder color.

But I think for this one, we're gonna go with a more natural finish -- just to clear-coat and highlight the natural beauty of the cherry as it ages.

Here's one other thing that you'll be able to notice about these two bookcases, and that's the feature of the rounded top.

And what's really nice about this is that it eliminates the possibility of just setting random junk on the top of any old horizontal surface.

It also shows how this upper shelf kind of turns into a stage where you can showcase some of your special family treasures.

[ Theme music plays ] If you want to build along for this bookcase, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

You can check it out.

There's more inspiration there for projects, tool tips, and ideas and helping you to become a better woodworker.

Then we'll join right back here for another great project in the Woodsmith Shop.

[ Music continues ] Announcer: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

♪♪ And by... Kreg, from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

♪♪ Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business.

It's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.