Desk-top Bookshelf Build Process
Return to main project pagePage 5 of 10
Posted 5th July 2026
This morning I had a very pleasant session with the music on and the chisels out. I didn't take many photos, but this was part way through chopping out the mortices:
I was really pleased with the fit. It needed a tiny bit shaving off the end of one of the tenons, but that was it:
With that done, it was time to chop the inner mortices, using my 8 mm mortice chisel:
I very nearly messed that up: as I was part way through chopping I realised that the angled end (for the wedge) had the angle going the wrong way. Thankfully, there's plenty of tenon on the end so I just made it a bit longer than originally planned and all was well.
The wedges came from this off-cut of Sycamore:
Test fit in the holes...
... and in the assembly:
They're obviously a bit long at the moment (although I intend to keep them quite long as they provide a bit of support to the upright).
Next up was to cut some dovetails into the other end of that board. Rather than just eye-balling it, I decided to mark the angles and tail spacings carefully:
As I want the tails to all look even here, I pulled out my sawing guide. I don't use this very much any more, although it was invaluable when I was learning to cut dovetails as I could focus on practising marking and chiselling and not have to worry about sawing. Once I'd mastered the other areas, I ditched the guide and just focused on sawing.
In this case, however, I'm being more picky about the angle and the smoothness of the tail sides, so the guide seemed a good option:
I then spent a fair while taking cutting across the end grain with a 7 mm chisel, being careful to take light cuts to minimise the chance of break-out (normally this wouldn't matter much but in this case I wanted a fairly clean surface). All done:
This is a bit of whimsy really: those dovetails are purely decorative, i.e. they won't have a mating half. I haven't decided whether to round the arrises off yet, but I'm leaning towards doing so. Leaving the edges sharp would be more true to a typical dovetail shape, but chamfering the edges would minimise the chance of breakage, splinters or just a sharp edge causing a cut.
Page 5 of 10
This website is free and ad-free, but costs me money to run. If you'd like to support this site, please consider making a small donation or sending me a message to let me know what you liked or found useful.