[ Power saw whirring ] ♪♪ There's always room in any house for a little extra and a little nicer-looking storage.

So this time on "The Woodsmith Shop," we're taking a whole new angle on a classic bookcase.

This time, we're calling it a book rack.

And its main feature is this trough that holds books at an angle.

It's made entirely out of solid wood, and I think it's time to start building.

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And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, Chris, I think bookcases are one of those furniture projects that almost every woodworker builds at some point.

But this one's a little bit different.

It is.

Rather than just being a square box, this bookshelf has a shelf that's at 45 degrees.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

It kind of adds a nice trough to the to the bookcase, and it allows you see all the spines on the -- everything that's on the top shelf.

Mm-hmm.

Very visible.

Yeah.

And looking at this, looking past the red oak and the 1990s golden oak -- Those were good days, Logan.

I'm sure they were.

There's some really cool design features in this, and there's a lot of woodworking really packed into what's a relatively small project.

Mm-hmm.

So let's start at the top.

We've got this cove.

That's a nice detail underneath here.

And that curve is then echoed in the curve of the sides, which is then echoed again in the curve of the stretcher.

These are all nice details that really work well together.

Exactly, and we talked about this trough, and you mentioned the trough here that sits at 45-degree angle.

There's no complicated joinery here.

No.

You know, this is a woodsmith project, and we try and think things through to make it a little easier for you.

So let's take a look at the trough.

The trough itself hangs on two steel pins which register on two slots on the front edge of the trough.

The back of a trough simply rests against a stretcher.

So it's very simple, strong, and easy.

You know, I like the fact that the joinery here on this trough is all at 90 degrees then, which makes it super easy to build.

So what material do you think we should build ours out of?

Well, not red oak.

No, not red oak.

How about alder?

Great choice.

Yeah, alder machines well, and it looks great.

We've built a couple projects in the past with it, and it looks phenomenal.

It is.

So, I think most of the woodworking happens on these sides, so maybe we should hand it off to Phil so he can get started on those.

I think so.

The defining element and the starting point for this book rack project are the two end assemblies.

Now, they consist of a long back leg and then a shaped front leg.

And while the shaped front leg looks nice, it's going to start off as two separate pieces.

What we have is a long, narrow front piece and then a shorter extension that's gonna get glued on later.

Once we take care of the joinery, then we'll cut it to shape.

It's just a lot easier right now to work with pieces when they're square.

So what you want to do is take some time now to lay out all of those joinery details.

Now, the back leg and the front leg are joined together by some rails using my favorite joinery technique, mortise and tenon.

Now, creating mortises can be done in any number of ways.

One of my favorite ways to do that is to use a plunge router like this.

Now, the bit in the plunge router is really important, and I have a spiral upcut bit here that matches the width of the mortise that I want to make, 1/4 of an inch.

Now, the spiral bit acts like a drill bit to pull the dust and chips out as it's routing.

To control and locate the router on the workpiece, I've attached an edge guide.

Then what we'll do is clamp our workpiece... ...onto the bench surface on edge.

Now, what I've done already is to locate and position the edge guide.

And you'll do that by lowering the bit.

And you can see here that the bit is centered on those layout lines for the mortise location.

Then you just tighten the screws that lock that edge guide in place.

To actually route the mortises, the procedure that I like to do is to line up the bit on one end of the mortise and then plunge down to its full depth.

In this case, it's one inch deep.

Then I'll slide the router to the other end of the mortise and plunge down to the full depth.

Then I'll make a series of plunge cuts all the way down the length of the mortise.

When I'm done, I'll go back to one end, lower the bit all the way, and then make a full depth pass all the way across.

Once you've taken care of routing the mortises in the edges of the short front legs, you can glue on those extensions that I talked about earlier.

When the glue is dry and the clamps come off, then you can set that on edge and take care of routing the mortise on the end of that extension.

It looks a little weird, but it works just the same way as the mortises that you've already taken care of.

While I was at it and had everything set up, I took care of routing mortises in four of the rails that joined the front and back legs together.

Now, these mortises are going to hold some thin slats that are gonna get installed later on.

But while I had everything set up, I thought I might as well take care of it.

What we're onto now is to route the mortises that are on the inside faces of both the back legs and the front legs.

Couple of things to point out -- the orientation is a little bit different here, so you want to make sure that you can clamp the piece securely to your bench so that your fence can ride along it to have accurate reference mark for routing the mortises, especially on the extension and then way down here on the bottom end of the leg.

With all the mortising taken care of, it's now time to turn our attention to shaping the legs.

And we have two separate operations on here.

For all four of the legs, we're going to cut a curved taper on the lower inside edge of the legs.

That's going to define the bottom.

Up at the top, you'll remember there's a large cutout that creates an arc that gives the front leg its style.

Now, here's how I did that.

I clamped a straight edge to the workbench, which is really just one of the back legs.

Then I marked a line where I can line up my leg blank.

Now I'm going to use a beam compass, and I've marked a center point.

And I can strike a line... ...to create the inside of the arc.

For the outside, I'm just going to shift it down two more inches... ...and strike a second arc.

Now it's time to head over to the bandsaw.

When I'm making cuts at the bandsaw, my goal is to stay as close to the layout line as possible.

Like to not go over the line.

But I want to be a little bit on the wayside.

That's going to minimize the amount of cleanup work that I'm going to have to do, which is what I'm going to tackle now.

So let's work from easiest to more complex.

We'll start with that curved taper on the inside edge of the bottom of the legs.

Now, you might think you can just grab some sandpaper and go at it.

But my tool of choice is actually to use a block plane.

You can actually use a block plane to follow in the shallow outside curve like this.

So you set it for a fine cut.

And then as you make each pass, you're going to press down on the nose of it and allow the blade to just follow along the edge of the curve.

Now, the hardest curve is this outside one on the front of the leg.

Here, since we're looking at a concave curve, I can't use the block plane, so what I'm going to use is the half round side of my file.

Again, I'm going to follow along... ...making a stroke that not only pushes forward, but rocks the file, as well.

Now, in all of these, what you're looking for is a curve that feels smooth.

You can quickly feel with your fingers where any lumps or divots still are and take care of those.

Once you have a smooth curve, you can finish up with some fine sandpaper, and then it's time for us to head over to the table saw and cut some tenons.

The second part of a mortise and tenon joint is cutting the tenons that fit into those mortises.

We're gonna do that with all the rail pieces here.

And since I can only put a 3/4-inch-wide dado blade on here, I'm gonna do it in two passes.

I'll make a first pass, then I'll slide the workpiece over so that it butts up against the rip fence and make a second pass.

Do this on the opposite face and you have your tenon, more or less.

Before stepping away from the table saw, you may need to raise the dado blade in order to cut the ends, the top and bottom shoulders on the tenons.

You want to do that so that they match the length of the mortises.

Now, speaking of the mortises, you'll remember that when we routed them, that's gonna leave round edges on them.

Now, you have two choices here.

You could square up the mortises and then cut the tenons and then they'll drop right into place.

Or you can do what I've done here, and that's to round those tenons just slightly.

We're ready for the assembly now, and that starts by installing the slats into those middle rails.

Now, the slats really aren't doing anything structural, so you don't really even need to glue them in place.

So I'm just going to slide them into their mortises.

Then what I can do is to apply some glue to those tenons.

And I'm using a slow-setting liquid hide glue here because it gives me more time to get all the parts together while I'm gluing things up.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ All right, so now that we have the sides glued together, let's concentrate on tackling the stretchers there and connect them.

Now, these stretchers are just a little bit longer than the ones that Phil used on the sides.

We'll cut a tenon on each end, and those are going to the mortises in the sides to hold everything together.

Now, there is one difference, though, and that's going to be that these need a groove cut in them.

Those are going to be grooves cut on the inside of the top stretcher, and those are going to be for a series of Z-clips.

Those Z-clips will fit down into the groove and then give us a connecting point for our top.

Now, the grooves are pretty basic.

They're just an 1/8-inch wide.

They're located about a 1/2 inch into the stretcher, and they're cut about a 1/2 inch deep, maybe 3/8.

However, with this being alder, it just is begging to have a little bit of hand planning done with it.

I'm going to use the plane to cut the groove.

I'm going to make sure that my two bench dogs are not in line with my cutter.

You don't want to run into a metal bench dog with a cutter.

Don't ask me how I know that.

So, now that that's held in, we can go and start our cut.

And I have a cut of protruding just a little bit, so it's gonna take a pretty light cut, and I'm gonna start down at the far end first.

And as I make these cuts, I'm gonna work further and further back to me until I'm making a full-length pass, and I'm going to cut that until I engage the depth stop, and then I know I'm at final depth.

Okay, there we go.

Now, my depth stop's engaged.

I'm not getting a cut anymore, so that tells me that my groove is at the depth we need.

So I'm gonna go ahead and cut the grooves in the other stretchers, then we'll head over to the bandsaw and cut a gentle curve in them, and then we'll cut the tenons in the ends.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, and there we go.

So now that we have a bookstand all glued up, let's talk about what we did with these stretchers.

So, after we cut that groove, I went ahead and went over the bandsaw and I cut this shallow arc in this top front stretcher and in the lower stretcher.

That just adds a little bit of a lift to the front of the bookcase when it's all done.

Then go ahead and cut the tenons on the ends.

I'm not going to bore you with video of that.

It's the same way that Phil cut the tenons for the end assemblies.

Top for our book trough is gonna be a wide piece of alder, and this one's been glued up from two boards.

It's about eight or nine inches wide.

And in the plans, it calls for having a cove cut on the bottom side, on the two ends, and the front.

Now, you know me, especially with alder, I'm gonna do that with a hand plane if I can.

And the hand planes that I'm going to use to cut that cove is gonna be these guys.

And these are hollows and rounds.

Now, hollows and rounds were how you would have traditionally cut molding before router tables were available.

Hollows and rounds come in all different radiuses and all different sizes, and a full set of them is about 20 planes, give or take a few planes, and each plane is a different size and different radius, and each plane has a hollow and a round, and they cut mating profiles.

And a full set would have one of each size and they'd be all paired up.

So for this top, I'm going to pick a size radius that I think's going to work well with our 3/4-inch top.

So this one happens to be about a number nine size.

So it's about 9/16 of an inch wide and it cuts approximately a radius of 1 1/4-inch circle diameter.

So for my top, I need to do a little bit of work before I break out that plane.

And I've already done that here, and that is cutting a rabbet along the edges where my cove is going to be.

So here I've cut it on both ends and I've cut it on the front.

And this is to guide our plane.

Now, unlike a bench plane where you guide it with your hand and it doesn't really matter what path it follows, with hollows and rounds, you need something to guide them.

So this rabbet will give us two reference points to rest that rounded sole of the plane on.

And it basically acts like railroad tracks to keep the plane going straight.

Now, as I'm cutting this, I am gonna rock the plane a little bit because I want to blend this radius into this for a nice, gentle curve.

And one other important thing to note, I am expecting a little bit of tear-out, especially across the end grain.

So if I can, I'm going to plane into the front edge or in the direction of the front edge, and I'm gonna plane the end grain first.

That way, any tear-out that happens to form along the front edge will be removed when I cut the cove along that front edge.

All right, now that I have a bunch of gift packing material and a pretty nice cove made, I just need a little bit of sanding to even it out.

And really, what we're trying to do is blend those three different cuts into one nice, smooth profile.

Once that's all done, all that's left to do is install it onto the book trough.

But let's wait to install it until after we apply a finish.

With the frame of our book rack finished, it's time to move on to the book trough and to the lower shelf.

Now, the book trough consists of a front and a back, and they're joined with the tongue-and-groove joint.

Now, a tongue-and-groove joint is ideal here because we'll reference our two parts together and it provides plenty of glue area for a strong connection.

Now, to start cutting that joint, the first thing I'm going to do is set up to cut the groove.

We always start with the groove first and then we can accommodate the width of that groove with the tongue.

I have a 1/4-inch router bit set up on a router table.

It's 1/4 of an inch high and a 1/2 inch from the fence.

Now, setting up a router bit to exact dimensions can be kind of tricky when using a ruler.

Sometimes it's hard to keep the ruler out of the hole around the router bit or out of the gap between the two fences.

And it can be a little difficult to read, particularly if you wear glasses.

So for setting up a router table, what I like to use are these setup blocks.

They come in pre-defined thicknesses.

For instance, this is a 1/4-inch setup block and this is a 1/2-inch.

So to set the fence, I'm going to use my 1/-inch setup block.

I'll place it between the fence and the bed, and I'll work with my fence until it just fits between the two.

To set the height of the router bit, I'm going to lay my 1/4-inch setup block flat on the router plate, and then I'll take the other setup block and rest of that on top and I'll work with the height of the router until that bit just slips under the top setup block.

♪♪ ♪♪ Before we can assemble the front and the back to form our book trough, I have one more chore to do, and that is that I need to route two small recesses -- one on this end of our part and one on the other.

And those two recesses are going to hang on steel pins in the frame, and then the back of our book trough will rest against the metal stretcher.

So, to cut those two recesses, I have our 1/4-inch router bit and our router table, and I have it set 5/8 of an inch from the fence.

Now, you'll notice two marks here.

Those are reference marks for how deep into the part I'm going to cut.

So to cut my first recess, I'll position my part and I'll move it until I reach this mark here.

Now, for this second cut, I am going to be feeding in what we normally consider the wrong direction for the router table, but for a short cut in soft alder, it'll be just fine.

♪♪ Going up the two parts for the book trough is straightforward work.

I'll begin by applying glue to both surfaces and putting my joint together.

Now it's time to clamp things up.

To ensure that my two parts are at exactly 90 degrees to each other, I'm going to start by clamping in the squaring jigs, one on each end.

Now that I know things are perfectly square, I'll go ahead and place three clamps along this broad face.

And that's got it, a joint that's tightly bound together and that's 90 degrees square.

Well, it's time for the bottom shelf.

Now, the bottom shelf sits inside and somewhat below the stretchers on our frame.

So in order to support that bottom shelf, what I need to do now is to make some 3/4-by-3/4 of an inch cleats.

The cleats also have a saw curve run on the inside edge, and that saw curve is going to hold a tabletop fastener.

The same device that's going to hold the top of our book rack on will also securely hold the bottom shelf in place.

I've got some extra pieces of alder here, and the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to cut the curve for those tabletop fasteners, and I'm all set up.

I'm going to cut that curve on each side of these extra pieces.

When I'm done with that, I'll set my saw up again and rip each final 3/4-by-3/4 cleat out of these parts.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Well, it's time for our final assembly.

Now, I've cut my bottom shelf an 1/8 inch narrower and an 1/8 inch shorter so it drops right in place.

I want that little bit of a gap, because that's going to allow the shelf to expand a contract with no harm done.

Now, the shelf is held securely in position using tabletop fasteners.

Now, these same fasteners were used to hold the top onto our book rack.

Our book trough is securely in place, being held up front by two steel pins and resting against this back stretcher.

So with that, it's time for me to give everything a final once over, thoroughly and completely sand the project, and it'll be ready for finishing.

Now, if you'd like to learn a little bit more about how we've finished our project, you can find a video at WoodsmithShop.com.

I'm all for easy-to-build projects that you can get done in a short amount of time.

And on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we took a basic concept, a bookcase, and gave it a new twist, and by spending a little bit more time on some of the details, you can come up with something totally different.

If you want to build trough-style bookcase like this one, you'll find plans at WoodsmithShop.com.

It's also the place to find some videos, free plans, and more to help you become a better woodworker.

And we'll see you next time right here in The Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free "Woodsmith" book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪