Building a bookshelf

I actually registered a business once in the state of Washington to build and sell furniture. I realized my dislike of cubical life early in my career and this was an attempt to extricate myself.  I even purchased $1000 worth of staight grain fir -- good quality stff -- to build 5 or so glass-doored book cases. I only completed one and it remains in our home to this day.  The fir has been carted around and kept for more than 20 years, and I decided to do something with it to get it out of my shop.  Here is what I decided to build.  

(P.S., I persevered through the entirety of my cubicle dwelling career, and a struggle it has always been)

It's a crappy old Craftsman table saw that I've rebuilt twice and remotored once. I have to set the fence at a very slight angle to ensure a straight rip, but I know how to get precise cuts out of it. Here are the rails and stiles of the vertical supports.  I build them with panels and the sides look something like cupboard doors, but I like them. 

See, here's a dry fit of one side of the shelf.  The panel is 1/4 inch plywood that will be painted black. 

I wanted 13" shelves and my stock was 10" (9.25" actual) so I had to join. I don't have a picture, but I use a joiner (jointer?) to mark the edges flat and then use a grinder-based biscuit joiner. Here are the two pieces of one shelf machined and ready to be glued and clamped. 

Gluing and clamping. Minimum of 12 hrs in the clamps, so 3 days to make the shelves, then lots of sanding because the joints are never perfect. 

Hard to see it here, but this is a radial arm saw with a wobble dado blade. Works great to machine perfect dados to set the shelves in. 

The radial arm saw was cheap -- less than $200 at a Mother's Day estate sale.  Yes, my wife loves me so much that she bought me a radial arm saw on Mother's Day. 

What makes the saw effective is that it is set in our old kitchen counter (in the shop! Not the kitchen) with 8 feet of counter on the left and 6 on the right. The large bench makes for easy, precise, stable cross cuts. This is a shelf-building machine. 

The completed side panels. Note the dados cut in the left one. Ready for the shelves. 

Here is the center vertical. It's a six foot shelf, so a center support is required, even with the inch thick shelves. 

Initial glue up of the bottom shelves. The top is screwed on later from below. 

Sometimes, there just aren't enough clamps (get it?  Forrest Gump quote . . .)

Top glued in the center and screwed on the sides. 

And here it is complete. Not yet varnished. That is why one has daughters. Elaine will do this (I hope). 

The whole project only took five days.

And what do you know, Elaine was game for helping to finish it.

And here is a matching TV stand made using the same materials and processes. Just different dimensions.