My lovely wife mentioned that she would like another library step ( a small two step stool for reaching the upper shelves of libraries) for our library as she uses the existing one in her office. We have many many books and book shelves. Since we already had one, I stole all the critical dimensions off of it. It was 3/4” material, about 15 inches tall, two steps about 7 inches deep. I didn’t have any 3/4” material but I did have a bunch of 1/2” maple furniture grade plywood. For the first time, I cut out all of the blanks I needed from the 1/2” plywood doubled and glued them up into approximately 1” thickness though technically it was probably 3/4” since 1/2” plywood is really 3/8”… anyway… I was able to square up the pieces on the table saw and I taped the sides together and did the layout right on the wood itself. I cut most of the profile on the bandsaw, until I snapped the blade by turning too tightly in thick material. I finished the last couple of cuts with a hand coping saw… less fun than you think.
After lots of sanding and shaping I glued and screwed it together using countersunk screws and I filled the screw heads with stain-able wood filler. I stained the whole thing with a dark walnut stain and then clear coated it with a spray clear coat. I’m still getting the hang of stain and how to get it to be even, so in this case I sorta leaned into the flaws I saw developing and went for an antique distressed look. I’m happy with how it came out and it is very sturdy and useful.
Following on that I decided to make a nightstand for next to our bed to replace a crude old shelf we’ve been using for 30 plus years… I decided that I wanted to make this one more based on joinery and so I designed a nice side table with legs, a drawer at the top, and a shelf in the middle as well as a top that was covered in felt. I did do some drawing for this one since the dimensions were critical and the joinery was going to be complicated.
The frame is soft maple and the panels are furniture grade maple plywood, the shelf, drawer, and top will probably be sanded pine plywood with the top framed with soft maple. I’m in progress working on it right now, and I’m learning a lot. I’ve seen joinery and such done many times before but this is my first time doing it. I haven’t messed anything outwardly visible up yet which I’m very proud of.
As part of this project I got a new high quality router and a router table. Excellent addition to the shop and it made a lot of the mortising much easier than it would have been. I’ve got some more wood on order and I need to do the drawer, shelf, bottom and back. I’ll report on progress as it happens.