♪ In my book, any time I get to spend in my shop is good time.

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're gonna take that and turn it into a practical project -- this great-looking glass-panel bookcase.

It's time to start building right now.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

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

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

Kreg.

And by... ♪ ♪ ♪ [ Motor whirring ] [ Whirring stops ] ♪ ♪ You know, Phil, if there's one thing I like about a bookcase, is it's not only a statement piece, or it can be a statement piece, but it's also utilitarian, as well.

Right.

I feel it's the ultimate in practicality, where -- and one of those early projects that I think a woodworker can really cut their teeth on.

Yeah.

And there's a couple things about this that I really like -- first, the set of doors.

They're nice.

They're glass.

They allow you to see the contents, but they're also decorated a little bit with these mutton strips.

They're pegged with dowels, and it's just really nice little accent pieces.

Yeah, but nothing really complicated or complex.

No, it isn't.

The doors are a simple build, and the bookcase itself is a pretty simple build, too.

And we have a really nice, warm contrast with the painted finish and the alder back, and I think it lends a really nice look to the bookcase.

But there's even more to this bookcase.

In the plans that we've featured in Woodsmith Magazine, there's two smaller, step-back cases that will go on either side of it, so you can expand this as far as you want.

Exactly.

And you could really really fill out a room with a set of these, and it would look really nice.

Yeah.

So whether you want to build one or all three or even more, you can find the plans at our website, woodsmithshop.com.

And I think everything gets started with a basic plywood case.

Exactly.

For as impressive as a large bookcase project ends up being, it really isn't that complex.

Just think large plywood box.

However, that large size does create a few decision points for you.

Now, the first of those is, what are you gonna do about those giant sheets of plywood?

One really good solution that I like to turn to is to have them sliced and diced right at the home center.

I usually have the guys cut it about a few inches larger in each direction.

It saves a lot of hassle on my part, and then once I get it back to my shop, I can trim and square up the panels so that they're as accurate as I want them to be.

Those large sizes of pieces will influence how I'm gonna create the tongue-and-dado joinery that join all the parts together.

Now, again, I don't really like muscling these big pieces on the table saw, so I'm gonna leave them right here at the workbench and use a handheld router and a straight bit.

To guide the router, I have a clamp-on straightedge guide that I can use, and now I've also clamped the two sides together so that as I cut the dados, they're both gonna be perfectly aligned.

I have these sides butted up against the stop that I've clamped to the edge of the workbench.

So now it's just a matter of making the cut.

♪ ♪ The clamping straightedge that I use to cut the dados won't work for the top of the sides, so instead, I switch to a different setup using an edge guide that attaches to the router itself.

I can use that same setup with a little modification in order to cut the mating part of the joint, which are the tongues on the ends of the fixed shelves, the top and the bottom.

Here, it's just a matter of setting the bit and the fence to be able to create a tongue that will fit tight into those dados.

I'm gonna also use this same setup to route a rabbit along the back edge of the two case sides, and that'll house the back that Logan's gonna install in a little bit.

After that, we're ready for assembly.

Well, we've come to the point where we can assemble this project now -- well, at least the main case of it.

What you want to do before you grab the glue bottle, though, is make sure that each one of the shelves and the top and bottom are gonna fit their respective dados.

The last thing you want is for something to seize up with glue on it.

So what I like to do is just double-check the fit, and if I need to, I'll grab a shoulder plane or a sanding block and fine-tune those joints.

My strategy here is to apply glue into the dados, and then I'll fit each one of the pieces into it.

And make sure you watch where they're gonna be aligned.

Once I have all the shelves and the top and bottom in place, I'm gonna lay the assembly facedown on the bench, and then I can bring up the other side and glue that in place.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It turns out I had enough clamps to put two clamps on each of the joints.

Now, if you don't have enough clamps, one of your solutions is to reinforce the joints as you go using some brad nails, so I can take the clamp off temporarily.

The side benefit here is now I don't have to leave the bookcase in clamps for so long waiting for glue to dry.

I can reinforce all the joints with nails and then stand it upright and get started on the face frame.

The face frame on a cabinet like this really helps to strengthen the whole front of the structure, and it helps add to the appearance of the overall project.

Before I get started on the actual pieces themselves, I needed to add some solid-wood edging to the two fixed shelves here.

I just glued and then nailed them in place.

Now, the face frame itself consists of two wide styles that are attached on the outside.

Now, down on the bottom edge of this style is a slight taper, and that's pretty easy to cut.

I used a jigsaw and cut off most of the waste.

Then, over at the bench, I used a block plane to smooth out the cut and bring it to the layout lines.

Now, between the two styles, I'm gonna put a wide upper rail and then a narrower lower rail on the bottom edge.

But I don't want to just glue these in place.

Instead, I'm gonna make a solid framework by joining all the pieces with pocket screws.

♪ ♪ ♪ I like to use pocket screws to strengthen the face frame.

When you're drilling the screws for it, you want to make sure that you get two screws in each of the pieces.

That way, it's not gonna rotate when you go to assemble it.

Then, when you're clamping up the frame, I like to clamp and add glue.

That way, you can keep all the joints nice and flat and flush while you drive the screws in place.

Then it's just a matter of coming over here to the bookcase, applying some glue to the front edge, and then clamping it up.

What you're looking for is keeping the surfaces flush on the top and on the sides, and then I can reinforce that joint with some nails, and then we can keep moving on.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Now to cap off this bookcase, we added a top piece.

That's really just a plywood panel with some solid-wood edging to cover up those exposed plywood edges.

And then to ease the transition between the top and the case, we added some crown molding.

Now, you don't have to make it yourself.

In fact, we just purchased this from the home center and then cut it to wrap around.

Now, when you want to do that, the thing that you really want to concentrate on are the fit of these miter joints on the front corners.

The back sides don't really matter, 'cause you're never gonna see them.

So once you have the length of the front piece dialed in, then it's just a matter of gluing it in place and adding a few pins just to hold it here.

Now all that's left is to add the back and the doors.

I'm gonna leave that to Logan.

Sharpening stones can be a pretty significant investment, but it's a great way to keep your tools in top form.

However, something a little unfortunate happened here in the woodsmith shop.

Two of our water stones fell off of the bench and onto the concrete floor.

Now, as you can see, they didn't fare too well.

But rather than just crying over spilled milk and thinking that these are a lost cause, there are a couple of ways to be able to salvage the situation.

The first is for something like this one, where you have most of the pieces.

They're in pretty good shape, and the chunks are pretty large.

What I'm gonna do is take some epoxy, and I can squeeze it out onto the faces where the cut edges are, and I'm gonna glue the stone back together.

You can be pretty generous with the epoxy, and the thing here is you want to make sure that you do it when the stone is completely dry.

And I'm doing this on a melamine board so that the stone isn't glued to the bench top.

Okay.

Get the pieces in their rough shape, and then I'll pull a clamp across.

You just need to bring the pieces together.

Once the epoxy dries, you can flatten the water stone just like you typically would in order to maintain it.

Then it'll be practically as good as new, and you can get a lot of use out of it.

Now, for this one, well, let's just say that this one really isn't salvageable.

So I can't glue it back together, but I can start to use the smaller pieces in other ways.

I can take this bigger one, for example, and clean up the edges of it and use it for sharpening pocket knives or small carving knives.

The other thing you can do is to find pieces that have a profile to them and turn them into custom slip stones.

Now, a slipstone is nothing more than a sharpening stone, but it's for a tool with a curved edge, like my carving gouge here.

So what I can do is take some sandpaper.

This will take a little bit of time, but I can start to -- I'll start to shape and profile the edge until I get something that matches the profile of my carving gouge.

So now I can use the slipstone as a way to keep my carving gouge in top shape, so it's another way to be able to take a disastrous situation, turn it around, and have it be something useful for your shop.

So now we're at the point of our bookcase build that we can wrap up the carcass.

And we're gonna do that by adding a back.

Now, of course, adding a plywood back would probably be the fastest and the simplest solution, but we can add a little bit of detail by making a back that's a little different.

And we're gonna do that by adding an alder shiplap back.

Now, I've already cut the pieces to size, and I've cut the shiplap joints already, and those shiplap joints are easy to cut over at the table saw.

I just went ahead and used the dado blade with a sacrificial fence, and I cut a rabbit along one edge, and then I flipped the board over and cut a rabbit on the opposite edge on the opposite face.

But it's important to note that when you're cutting the two outside pieces, they only need a rabbit on one edge, because the case is already rabbited to accept it.

So I have all my pieces already cut, and they're almost ready to install, but we want to do one thing first.

Where the shiplaps meet, I always like to add a slight chamfer.

Once the back is installed in the case, that chamfer will really catch the light, and it will hide any discrepancies you have in the back where the boards separate a little bit.

So, I've already cut the chamfers on this piece, so let's set that off to the side.

And to cut the chamfers, I really just like to grab a small block plane and make a couple passes.

The chamfer doesn't have to be real big.

So I'll do that to where each of the shiplap pieces meet.

Once I get those all done, we'll head over to the case and get it installed.

Now, once you have all the chamfers cut on the edges of the shiplap, you're ready to install it.

And if you take a look at the plans, they suggest to install the back with a pair of screws into each location.

Now, I think that's a little bit of overkill, and because this is a shiplap back, it's kind of a traditional style, I'm gonna use a traditional nail, and that's gonna be a cut nail.

They're really cool, and it's one of those things if somebody ever looks at the back, they'll think, "Oh, that's kind of a neat little detail."

Now how I'm gonna install this back is with one nail into each board.

And I think that's probably the best way to install shiplap.

We can let the board do the work for us, and I'll show you what I mean.

Because this rabbit is gonna be overtop of this one, if we nail close to the rabbit, but not into it, that force is gonna hold this board down.

So the nail over here will hold it down, and the rabbit will push down on this edge.

So let's go ahead and get that slipped into place, and you can see that rabbit pushing down.

It's gonna hold this board down, but it's still gonna allow the board to expand and contract as it gains and loses moisture.

And if you're gonna use cut nails, it's important to make sure you predrill them, and when you install them, make sure they're installed following the direction of the board.

If you turn them, they have a little bit of a wedge shape, and driving that wedge in across the grain will cause the board to split.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So now that we have the back installed on our bookcase, we can go ahead and turn our focus to the doors.

Now, let's talk about the door parts real quick.

Obviously, we have a pair of rails and styles, and we also have some decorative mutton strips that we're gonna add.

Now, the joinery for the doors is something you have probably seen us use in the past.

That's gonna be mortise and tenon.

So the first thing we need to do is, we need to cut the mortises into the styles.

And to do that, I'm gonna use a router with a straightedge and a straight bit.

Now, I've already set that guy up.

And you can see here, I have all four of my styles clamped together.

And that's really just to give me a big surface area for me to set the router base onto so it doesn't get tippy on me.

So, I'll start this by making the first mortise on the first work piece, and I'm gonna cut that in multiple passes.

It's pretty deep.

It's an inch and a half.

So probably three or four passes to get down to final depth.

And then I'm gonna come to the other end and cut that opposite end's mortise.

Once I have those both cut on that first piece, I'm gonna unclamp this, and I'll move that to the backside and work on the next piece.

And then it's just stepping through that until we have the mortises cut.

♪ ♪ ♪ So, after you have the mortises cut in the styles, you can go ahead and tackle the tenons on the rails, and I've done that here.

It's quick to do over the table saw.

I just use a dado blade with a sacrificial fence to line up the shoulder of the tenon, and then I cut it away in a couple passes.

Then you can reset the blade, raise it up, and remove the top and bottom shoulders.

And while you're there, you might as well cut the mutton strips, as well.

The first thing I cut is the half-lap that joins the cross and vertical section.

And really, that's just a matter of sneaking up on the fit and taking light cuts until they snap together with no gaps.

And once that is done, you can go ahead and cut the rabbits on each end, and those will fit over the frame on the finished door.

And we'll set those off to the side for now, and I think our door is ready to glue up.

We'll start with applying glue on one of the tenons.

We'll get that into place.

We'll do the opposite tenon... and we'll get that guy in place.

Now, these ones are always the tricky ones to not get glue all over.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ All right.

There we go.

Now, once we give this glue a little bit of time to tack up and cure, we'll go ahead and flip this over, and we'll cut a rabbit on the inside for the glass.

All right.

Once that rabbit's all cut, there's really only one thing left to take care of for the doors before they're ready for a finish, and that's to install the mutton strip.

Now, I went ahead and snapped this guy together, and it has a decorative chamfer routed around the edge.

But honestly, it's so slight that you could probably sand it in there by hand no problem.

Once that's in place, we can go ahead and slide that mutton strip where it goes.

Just check the fit.

And it looks like it fits pretty well, so I'm gonna go ahead and apply a dab of glue underneath.

Now, that's not gonna add a lot of structural strength, but it'll help hold it in place.

And then we're gonna come back with a drill bit, and we're gonna drill down through the center of that rabbited tongue, and we're gonna install a little dowel.

And once that's in place, door is gonna be ready for a finish, and then you can add glass.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ There we go.

Now, once those dowels are in place and the glue dries, you can come back with a flush trim saw and use a spacer to trim them, but you're gonna leave them a little proud, just for a little bit of decorative touch.

But once those are trimmed, the door is ready for paint, and then you can add glass.

♪ You know, I enjoy almost every aspect of woodworking.

The only thing I don't really care for is sanding, so I try to avoid it whenever possible.

And I do that through the use of hand planes.

When I was recently working on a clock project for a friend of mine, I had these small, little rails that needed to be planed out and smoothed out, 'cause there was a little bit of mill marks left from the table saw.

Now, these are pretty short.

They're too short to fit in between the dogs on the bench, and clamping something this small is a face vice is kind of hard.

So I grabbed a strip of double-sided tape and stuck it down to the bench.

And that way, I can just stick this guy down, and for the light passes I'm taking, it was the perfect holding solution.

Our bookcase project wrapped up with a few small details.

It's just a matter of fitting the doors, installing the hinges and the pulls and the glass panels.

We also added the painted finish, but there's more to this bookcase project.

What you can do in the plans is to add two smaller step-back side bookcases.

If you'd like to get a set of those plans, they're at our website, woodsmithshop.com.

From there, you can make as many of these cases as you want and create a whole library room in your house, and then we'll see you right back here in the woodsmith shop.

♪ ♪ ♪ Phil: 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.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

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

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

Kreg.

And by... ♪