Desk-top Bookshelf

This is a simple bookshelf I made to organise a few technical reference books on my desk at work. The photo with all the novels was just taken because I wanted to get a photo of it loaded up before taking it into work.

It's made from a single piece of Sycamore (Acer Pseudoplatanus) and included my first ever attempt at a secret mitre dovetail joint (which went much better than I'd expected). For the secret mitre dovetail, I mostly followed the method described in David Charlesworth's excellent video.

The through dovetails at the top of the upright are just for decoration (I figured that if I was going to hide the dovetails in the actual dovetail joint I'd put some on display elsewhere). The wedges for the tenons provide a bit of extra support for the (16 mm thick) upright and are glued in place rather than just relying on a wedging action. That glue meant I could use 10° wedges to match the 10° lean angle of the piece.

It was made mostly with hand tools, although unusually for me I did end up sanding it (with a random orbital sander) rather than just leaving a smoothing plane finish. That was just because I was feeling nervous about damaging the slightly spalted timber in that secret mitre dovetail joint so I wimped out and went with the sander rather than planing it smooth. I also used a pillar drill to rough out the mortices.

The finish is my usual first choice of "Mike's Magic Mix" (equal parts by volume Pure Tung Oil, White Spirit and Satin Varnish daubed on, left for five minutes and then wiped off with paper towels).

There's a detailed write-up of the process I went through to make it in the build log.

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