CD Bookcase

[Matt Walton]

I have been thinking about CD storage lately, namely, the fact that they all have wide shelves, and when full of CDs, the shelves always seem to droop. Now this may be mostly attributed to the fact that all of our CD bookcases are cheap particleboard, but would still have this fear if it was solid wood. This lead me to think about these CD holder strips, but I didn't like the idea of plastic (I figured they would break fairly soon), so at first I thought about a dado for each CD, but that would be a lot of wasted space. Then it finally hit me to just make each shelf smaller, so there would be less unsupported weight in the middle. I know it took me a little too long to come to this conclusion, but I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

Anyway, I just now got around to modeling it in SketchUp, and this is what I came up with:
CD Bookcase.jpg

And for those curious, the CDs would be sorted alphabetically by column
But anyway, I have a few questions about my design.
First of all, are there already plans for something like this, so I could just start building instead of trying to design it?
Next, if there aren't any, and I do need to design it, would you suggest sticking with the current design, or try a different style?

The dimensions are 54" x 12" x 68.5"
Some of my worries:
To start with, the vertical dividers are 1" thick to accommodate the dados for the shelf, each dado 1/4" deep, leaving 1/2" of wood between shelves. I'm worried that might make it look too thick. How shallow can you make dados (possibly letting me bring the thickness down to 3/4")? Also, I will have to redo it anyway, since we don't have anywhere that it would fit at this point. I figured out that at its current stage, it would hold about 1,118 CDs. I'm pretty darn sure we don't have that many CDs, so downsizing it shouldn't be a problem, but I'll try to get a better idea of exactly how many we have tomorrow.

Here is a link to the model in the 3D Warehouse if you want a better look at the model. And of course feel free to ask any questions that I haven't covered.
Any help would be appreciated.

[David Reed]

I have very successfully made shelves somewhat similar to this using 3/4" shelves and 1/8 inch dados. For this to work well, it would be better to have a back both to control racking as well as preventing the dividers from lifting from the dados. I did not even glue them in place, although this would add considerably to the stability. I have done this with full 3/4 dividers but it looked very heavy. I would use 1/4 or up to 1/2 inch dividers. I have even used 1/8 " dividers. Thinner looked more balanced IMHO

[Brian Vaughn]

I know it's been over a week, and if you're like me, you might already be done But I've built very similar DVD shelves. Sorry, I'm not home right now or I'd give exact dimensions, but I'll get you close.
A CD case is about 5 inches high (Actually about 1/8" short) and about 5.75 inches deep (again, about 1/8" short.) I have found that about 1/2" is a nice space above the case to get your finger in and pull it out. I used 1/2" shelves and 1/2" vertical risers when I built mine, and drilled holes for pins/support (I was trying to make it fast, not pretty). My shelves were each about 10.5" long, and have never sagged one bit (Like you, I'm none too trusting of particle board).
That being said, I didn't want a lot of room on the front of the shelf, and I planned to push the DVD all the way to the back, so I believe I just used standard 6" wide particleboard (DVD Cases are about 5.3 inches deep) and it looks good. I'll try to get a picture when I get home tonight, but the only other advice I'd say is to echo what David said, and consider thinner boards. I wouldn't go so far as the 1/8", after all, the vertical risers are holding up all the weight of those CD's, and 1000 CD's and cases will weight almost 300 lbs.

Oh, and as with tools, I know you don't have that many yet, but make it bigger than you think you'll need!

[Matt Walton]

Oh, don't worry. I haven't even started yet! I've been gone for two different 5 day trips in the last few weeks, with only two days at home between them.
Anyways, I was looking at our current CD rack, and the CDs stick out slightly, and I see no reason not to do that. I was communicating with another Creeker in private, and since then, I have gone through about 2 revisions, and working on my 3rd one. The older ones were scrapped for different reasons, the main one being space, but then I realized I had some really oddball measurements, so it was on to revision 3 and a calculator to get a non-loony dimension. I'm still working on that, because like I said, I've been super busy lately. I will keep you posted though.

[Jamie Buxton]

What holds the shelves in the dados -- just glue? You have zillions of glue joints, so maybe that's okay, but end-grain glue joints aren't as secure as face-grain ones.

An alternative design would be to keep the dado construction, but make the shelf continuous at the rear. That is, a shelf board would be nearly 54" wide. It would have three slots in it, running from the front to perhaps halfway back. The internal walls would have all the dados you show, plus slots in each dado running from the rear to perhaps halfway to the front. To fasten the end walls to the shelves, you could retain the dado construction, but also run Miller dowels through the end walls. They look pretty good, and greatly increase the strength of the joint.

[Paul Symchych]

Matt: You've probably finished by now but in case you haven't... a thought on the CDs sticking out a bit. They can be flush with the face of the rack.
I built a CD rack almost 6 feet tall, not as wide as yours, and handled the question of getting at the CDs by leaving a 'generous' 3/4" or so of air above the CD and chamfering the shelf so that I can get a finger under the CD. EAsy to grab the CD with two fingers. No need for the CDs to stick out.

[Matt Walton]

Ha, I haven't even started. I don't remember what made me stop, but I still want to do it. Right now, I'm working on a couple step stools for my dad's train layout, and after that, I'm going to start on a MAME cabinet. I am pretty sure I am going to college this fall, so I want to get this MAME cabinet done. But I haven't completely abandoned it, and still want to do it.

[Federico Mena Quintero]

cds.jpg

I built these little shelves for CDs a few years ago - the thing that actually got me interested in woodworking; I didn't know *those* were called dados, and I wasn't able to saw them straight!

The other posters already mentioned the basic features of a CD shelf - a little space above CDs so you can pull them out, and a backing board or strip on each shelf so that you push a CD in and it automatically gets aligned with the spine of the others.

The shelf on the top, the long one, has a strip of wood glued on top of the back of the shelf - that's the depth stop for the CDs, and I'm sure it also helps to stiffen the shelf. It *seems* longer than each section on your model, and it hasn't sagged yet, so I wouldn't worry about sagging.

(Don't worry about having too much space. I thought I did, too, and eventually it filled up.)

(I like alphabetical by author - but what do you do with multi-author compilations! Argh!)

Good luck with your case; having a little furniture to keep CDs tidy is just glorious