Details of bookcase closet doors project

[bruegf]

Things have finally settled down at work enough that I finally have found the time to post the project here as I promised earlier.

This project came about from, as they say, a "series of unfortunate events".  It started by the decision we made to replace the old weathered aluminum siding on our home with vinyl siding.  Once we decided to do that, I decided it was time to rip out a 12' sliding door and a 6' sliding door in our living room and replace them with a french door and a fixed picture window w/ casement windows on each side, since we were replacing the siding anyway.  That meant changing the interior walls, which lead to repainting the living room, which lead to repainting the hallway, which meant that the old louvered bifold doors for the hallway closet needed to be painted and my wife (the painter in the family) refused to mess w/ them, so I decided to replace the louvered doors with new solid panel bifold doors.  Unfortunately the closet opening wasn't a standard size, so I waffled between custom ordering new doors or building my replacement door bifold door panels. 

Since I wasn't real motivated for this project I procastinated long enough that my wife saw a segment on one of the home improvement shows about a bookcase door to hide a doorway into another room, which start the ball rolling on this project.  Now that the project is finished I'm really happy that all this happened.  The doors look (and work) great.

Next..... the details

Fred

 

[bruegf]

The pair of doors are a pair of bookcases sized just big enough to hold paperback books, which is essentially the wall thickness. The doors are constructed from solid cherry.

The first step was to edge joint and plane all of the panels needed. No pictures here as I did this at my Dad's shop on his 8" jointer and 12" planer. The boards where then cut to final width on the table saw.

Most of the rest of the steps were done in my basement shop using my Festool equipment.

First step was to route the hinges, using a shop made jig of father's and my OF1400 router with set of copy rings. Below is the picture of one bookcase side panel after the hinge recess were routed.
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Next I drilled the holes for the shelf support pins using the LR32 and OF1400. Since I only have the short LR32 rail I joined one of my regular rails to the LR32 rail so that I had enough rail length to clamp the rail at each end of the panel. The next 3 photos show the use of the side stops to position the rail 3/4" in from the edge and the longitudonal stop setup for a 32 mm offset. Since there will be a fixed shelf near the middle of the bookcase to prevent bowing of the side panels there a distinct set of upper and lower holes that stop short of the position of the fixed center shelf. The top set of holes where done using a 16 mm offset because the starting and ending positions of the holes worked out to more closely match how the shelves would be positioned based on the size of a typical paperback.

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Because the panels were too narrow to fully support the guide rail, I positioned two panels side by side and then clamped the guide rail once it was postioned properly. If you look closely at the end of the panel in the last photo above you can see how I fixed the problem I had with the holes not aligning after I first drilled them. I routed a 1/2" wide slot using the router on the guide rail and then glued in a strip of scrap cherry, planed it back down to thickness and then glued a layer of cherry veneer over that side of the panel to cover up the fix.

The next set of photos shows how I used the domino. I cut the domino slots at the top of the bookcase side panels by using the registration pins off of both sides of the panel and set the fence to 90 degrees. I cut a narrow slot at the front side and a medium width slot at the back. To cut the slots for the center fixed shelf I used the rail on the MFT to register the base of the domino. The second photo shows how I used an exacto knife positioned at the point where I wanted the bottom of the shelf to be and slid the panel until the knife blade was flush against the side of the rail. The next photo then shows registering the pins off the side of the panel while holding the base of the domino snugly against the edge of the fence. I used the same technique to cut the slots for the bottom shelf since it was 2 11/16 above the bottom end of the panel to leave room for a toe kick. Plus this gives me a place where I can mount a caster of some sort if the weight of the books starts causing the bookcase to sag.

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Next I cut the domino slots on the top, center and bottom shelves. Since the top shelf is flush with the top of the side panel I set the fence to 90 degrees and registered the slot from the top surface of the shelf, again registering the pins off the side of the shelf. Since I cut the slots in the side panel for the center and bottom shelf to register from the bottom surface of those shelves i registered the slots using the base of the domino on the MFT surface.

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[bruegf]

Next step was to cut slots for the toe kick into the bottom surface of the bottom shelf. I again used the MFT rail to register the base of the domino, using one narrow cut and two medium cuts. The slots at each end where registered using the pins and the center slot was located by use of a pencil line.

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The recess for the quarter inch cherry plywood back panel was routed along the back edges of the side panels and top and bottom shelves using the OF1400 and the edge guide.

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Last step was to cut the adjustable shelves to width using the MFT and a flip stop on the MFT fence, followed by sanding of all panels using the RO125 with 100 and 150 grit rubin.

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The next two photos show why I like the domino so much better than biscuits - dry fitting. I assemble the bookcase, carried it upstairs, hung it from the hinges and discovered that my calculations for the clearance needed to swing a 5 1/2" thick door was off because I didn't take into account that the center point of the hinge pin was 1/2" in front of the front edge of the bookcase. Since nothing was glued, it was a simple matter of trimming an exta 5/32" off each of the shelves.

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[bruegf]

All of the panels were sprayed with two coats of a 2 part conversion varnish using HVLP before assembly.  Below are photos of the completed project

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[harry_]

I am curious to know, was the caster eventually needed?

 

[bruegf]

Not yet and shows no sign of becoming necessary.  I currently have over 150 paperbooks on the shelves.

Fred

 

[harry_]

Thanks Fred, that's good to know!

 

[honeydoman]

hey nice pic showing how you made them and great looking bookcase. [eek]

 

[rookie08]

Wow - that looks great.  Great pictures too.  I'm curious, you show some orange clamps on your MFT that I've never seen before.  Can you tell what they are?

Thanks!

 

[bruegf]

Rookie08,

Clamps are made by Jorgensen.

http://www.amazon.com/Jorgensen-Hold-Down-Clamps-Workbenches-Pkg/dp/B001MBEP66/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1260623301&sr=1-6

Thanks Kreg.  It was a bit more work than just replacing the doors with solid bifold doors would have been, but they look so much nicer and have worked out far better than I had hoped.

Fred