Notice the obvious L-brackets at each corner, and the triangular plywood pieces in the top back corners that prevent this monster from racking? It’s too much!
To house my TV and other A/V equipment, I constructed a Shaker Stepback for the February 2009 issue. Sure, as a woodworker (and a persnickety person in general) there are small areas of the project with which Im unhappy , one door is a wee bit racked, and the upper case doesnt sit seamlessly on the lower case. But, these are fixable problems, and it looks a heck of a lot better than the old rickety table I was using as a TV stand (under which was stacked the cable box, DVD player, VCR and stereo).
The problem with the stepback is the way the shelves on either side of the fireplace look now. They never actually looked good (after all, I made them 20 years ago from Borg-bought dimensioned pine and L-brackets). Theyve held together for two decades and held a lot of books in their lifetime. But the death knell is beginning to toll.
For the last few weeks, Ive been designing a bookcase that sits on a slightly deeper lower case piece with two drawers in it (to help overcome the inherent instability of an 8-tall shallow piece). The form I created is called a “biblioteque”. It is a huge improvement even though I have barely begun.
Yesterday and today I milled the stock and glued up all my panels then I cheated a bit by taking advantage of Glen Hueys wide-belt sander to get things to final thickness.
