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View Full Version : Live Edge Cherry bookshelf



Pat Pollin
04-28-2014, 9:13 PM
This is my first furniture piece. I normally build bass guitars.

The joinery/woodworking is not much special but what really captivates me about this is the natural beauty of the wood underneath the shellac finish. It is rather eye catching.

I have a great need for book storage in my apartment with my girlfriend. We love reading and having book resources on all of our favorite topics. Contrary to suggestions to do the fast option of buying something off craigslist for $50 I had a better option in mind I think we are all familiar with: build a stronger, more beautiful one myself.

Got some great cherry stock from fellow creeker James. It was pretty much straight out of the kiln, rough sawn on the faces and live on all edges, which inspired the live edge look.

Tons of room for creativity which also means lots of work to get it to usable form.

It was a lot of work to flatten and plane the boards on my 6" joiner. took off the guard and flattened the right most 6" of the board, double sided taped a piece of plywood to that to put upside down in the planer to flatten the top side, then flip again to flatten the first side. it felt pretty inefficient but many of the boards are over 8" so I don't think that an 8" joiner would have been a huge improvement in that method. I now have a much better table saw than I did for making this project so I think I would make a miter-slot fixture for holding a raw edge board and doing the initial ripping also. My circular saw straight rip-jig was difficult to clamp and use and made it kind of frustrating to get started on each board.

This is my second french polish. It isn't perfect but the pressure was on to get those books out of their crates so I did what I thought was a protective build in a few sessions and left it at that.

It was a bit difficult for me to photograph the whole piece but you can see the wood nicely.
Thanks for looking!

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Brian Williamson
04-29-2014, 2:52 AM
Love it! What a great idea.

James White
05-10-2014, 7:57 AM
Pat,

That came out great! Those where some difficult boards to work with. It looks like you achieved what you where looking to do. It's good to see that you got the hang of the french polish. It really brings the wood to life. James

Kent A Bathurst
05-10-2014, 11:36 AM
Very nice. The contrast between heartwood and sapwood is going to be beautiful as it ages. Good choice - nice cherry, leave it natural, let nature add the color.

Gotta tell you, though - My lower thigh hurts from just looking at those projecting shelf edges.

I have no doubt you are nowhere near my spot on the "Clumsy Scale" , so you should be fine.

Nice transition from guitars to case work -