Show off your pottery, books and good taste by building an authentic reproduction of a turn-of-the-century classic.
In 1996 I stopped purchasing Arts & Crafts furniture, and this bookcase is the reason why. After collecting Arts & Crafts furniture since 1990, I had amassed a small but nice collection on my salary as a newspaper reporter. However the piece I wanted but never could find is a glass-front bookcase. So I patiently saved my money and went to an auction in Chicago, ready to buy this very bookcase, which had been featured prominently in the auctions catalog.
I was outbid. Well, completely blown out of the water is more like it. I went home that day with two smaller pieces that, while nice, were not exactly what I wanted. So like any scorned woodworker, I plotted and planned. I sought out dimensions from auction catalogs and reprints of historical materials. And when I was ready, I built the bookcase Id always wanted. Limbert pieces were almost always made from quartersawn oak or ash, but I decided that cherry with a deep mahogany finish was what I wanted.
Everything about this piece is as authentic as I could get, from the knob to the shiplapped beadboard back. My only compromises were some non-mortise hinges (Im convinced Limbert would have used these if Amerock had been making them in 1904), and a thin bead of silicone to help hold the glass in place. Construction is simple well within the reach of most beginning and intermediate woodworkers. The top, bottom and gallery back rest in dados and rabbets in the sides. The beadboard back is screwed into rabbets on the case members. And the doors are simple mortise-and-tenon construction. In fact, the only tricky part is the mullions on the doors. But if you take some care when building them, you should have no problem at all.
You need about 50 board feet of 4/4 cherry (thats 1" thick) to build Limberts #340 bookcase, and not a scrap of plywood. Begin by surfacing all your material and gluing up the panels youll need for the sides, top, bottom and shelves.
Start with the Sides
Begin working on the case by cutting the 3/8" x 5/8"-deep rabbets on the back edges of the top, bottom and side pieces for the back. The rabbeting bit I own for my router table wasn't large enough to make this cut easily, so I made the rabbet in two passes on the table saw. While youre at the saw, cut the 5/8" x 3/8"-long tongues on the ends of the gallery back. These tongues allow the gallery back to lock into the rabbet on the side pieces.
Now its time to mill the 3/8"-deep dados in the sides that will hold the top and bottom in place. Make a simple plywood jig (it takes about five minutes) to cut these dados. Heres how to do it: first study the photo at left to see generally what the jig looks like. Basically its two pieces of plywood with two pieces of scrap nailed to them. Youll notice that the two pieces of plywood that the router rides on are different widths. This is no accident. One of them is 4" wide and the other is 2-1/2" wide. The dado that holds the top needs to go 4" from the top edge. The dado that holds the bottom needs to go 2-1/2" from the bottom edge. With this little jig, all you need to do to make a perfectly placed dado is put the 4" wide part flush against the top edge of the side. Clamp the jig in place, and make the dado cut using a pattern bit (with a top-mounted bearing) thats chucked into your plunge router. Turn the jig around and put the 2-1/2"-wide edge against the bottom edge and cut the dado for the bottom. Heres the easy way to make the jig. Rip the two pieces of plywood to size and place them on top of one of the side pieces. Now put pieces of 3/4"-thick scrap under the plywood thats the same thickness as the sides. Now take another piece of scrap thats exactly as thick as your top and bottom pieces and place it between the two pieces of plywood.
Press the pieces of plywood together against the piece of scrap between them and nail the plywood to the wood below. Your jig is done. Heres the easy way to make the jig. Rip the two pieces of plywood to size and place them on top of one of the side pieces. Now put pieces of 3/4"-thick scrap under the plywood thats the same thickness as the sides. Now take another piece of scrap thats exactly as thick as your top and bottom pieces and place it between the two pieces of plywood.
Place the jig on top of the sides, clamp it down and rout the 3/4"-wide x 3/8"-deep dados for the top and sides. Youll need to make these dados in at least two passes to be safe.
Before you can assemble the case, you need to cut the 1/2" radius on the front corner of the side pieces and the front corners of the top piece, which extends beyond the front of the case by 1/4". Make the pattern using a piece of plywood. Cut the radius on the plywood using a band saw and then sand it smooth. Use this pattern with a pattern-cutting bit in your router to shape the corners. Now sand all the case parts up to 150 grit and get ready to assemble them.
Assembly
To assemble the case, I recommend you use polyurethane glue. First, it is superior to yellow glue when joining long grain to end grain. Second, it has a long open time so you have about 20 to 40 minutes to make sure your cabinet is square.
If you've never used polyurethane glue, let me tell you that you should use as little as possible because the foamy squeeze-out is no fun to clean up. I like to coat one part thats being glued with a very thin (but consistent) film of the glue.
Then I wipe a little water on the part its being joined to. Moisture activates the glue and speeds curing. Glue the top, bottom and gallery back between the sides. Clamp up your case and let it sit overnight.
When the glue has cured, take the case out of the clamps and drill the holes for your adjustable shelf pins. I made a plywood jig using my drill press and a 5 mm bit. I drilled holes every 3" and placed each row 2" from the front and back of the cabinet. Finally, glue the kick to the bottom of the case. I cut biscuit slots in the bottom and in the kick to keep the piece aligned as I clamped it to the bottom piece.
The Back
If you've never built a solid wood shiplapped back, I think youre going to find the reward is well worth the effort. Build the back before you build the doors because the back, when screwed in place, holds your case square. A square case is critical when hanging your doors.
Make your back pieces out of any scrap pieces of cherry you have lying around. Narrow pieces are OK. You just want to make sure that the width of the pieces will add up to 31-1/4" when in place in the rabbet in the case sides.
Begin by cutting 5/16"-deep x 1/4"-wide rabbets on the edges. I like to use a rabbeting bit in a router table. Cut the rabbet on both long edges of the boards (one on the front face of the board and the other on the back) for the back boards except the boards that will go on the outside. Those need the rabbet on only one edge.
Now cut the bead on one edge of the tongue pieces using a beading bit in your router table. Beading bits look confusing at first. Just remember to run the boards on edge through your router table.
Now fit your back pieces in place in the rabbet in the case. Put quarters between your back boards to space out the boards. This allows the back to expand and contract with the seasons.
When everything fits, screw the back boards in place. Use only two screws to attach each back board: one centered at the top and one at the bottom. (This will prevent your back from self-destructing later.) On the boards on the ends you can also screw the back boards into the side rabbets.
I like to build my doors to the exact size of the opening and then fit them to size on the jointer. These doors are built using mortise-and-tenon joinery. I cut my tenons on a table saw using a dado stack and then used them to lay out my mortises.
Doors
All the tenons for the doors are 3/8" thick. The tenons on the rails are all 1" long. The tenons on the middle stiles are 1/2" long. I cut 3/16" shoulders on all the tenons. When cutting your mortises, make them 1/16" deeper than the tenon is long. This prevents your tenon from bottoming out in your mortise.
Check the fit of everything and then glue up the doors. When the glue is dry, you need to cut 3/8" x 3/8" rabbets on the back side of the door to hold the glass. The best way to do this is to use a bearing-guided rabbeting bit in your router table as shown in the photo above.
Take it slow in the corners so you dont blow out the wood around the middle stile and middle rail. Sand your doors and get ready to hang them.
Get a Perfect Gap
The goal when hanging an inset door like this is to get a 1/16" gap all around. If your case is square and your doors are square, its going to be a simple task. Start by putting one of the doors in place and holding the stile against the side. This is where youre going to find out if everything is square. If things are square, you can just start shaving off a little bit from the stiles and rails until you have the gap you want.
If things aren't square, you need to make some tapered cuts on your doors. You can do this on your jointer, but I prefer to use a hand plane to shave off the excess. This allows you to stop your cut exactly where you want it. Keep working at it until the gap looks reasonably uniform.
Now hang the doors. I used Amerock non-mortise hinges. These hinges are adjustable so you can get your inset doors lined up just right. And installing them is a snap.
First screw the hinges to the case. Then attach the doors to the hinges using spring clamps. Drill pilot holes for your screws and screw the doors to the hinges. Remove the spring clamps. While youre at it, add the knob and the catches you've chosen to hold the doors shut.
Remove all the hardware and then cut some 1/4" x 1/4" retaining strips to hold the glass in place. Sand everything to 150 grit and prepare for finishing.
Glass
Normally I would pin the strips to the doors to hold the glass in place. But because the mullions are so small this was out of the question. Silicone to the rescue. Put a small bead of 100-percent clear silicone (available at any home center) in the rabbet, and place the 1/8"-thick glass in place. Then run another small bead of silicone in the gap between the wood and the glass and press the wooden retaining strips in place. Use spring clamps to hold them in place while the silicone sets up.
Finishing
Begin the finishing with a water-based dye. Wipe the glaze on with a cheesecloth. Allow it to flash after a couple minutes, and then wipe off the excess until you achieve an even tone. Allow the glaze to dry overnight. Finally, apply three top coats of a clear finish, such as lacquer.
Now that the bookcase is done, I plan to set it up in my study, right where I always envisioned it. And the first thing Im going to put in there is all those auction catalogs I dont have any more use for.
Dealing with Warped Doors
Once you hang your doors, you might find that the stiles dont line up just right. No matter how flat you plane your stock, theres still a chance that your stiles wont be perfect and one will bend out in front of the other. Sometimes this is caused by clamping too tightly. Sometimes its squirrelly wood. There are two ways of dealing with this. First, you can make your door parts out of two thin pieces of cherry laminated together. I made these stiles from two pieces of 1/2" cherry that I glued together at the face and then planed the lamination down to 3/4". This process produces a primitive form of two-ply plywood that will resist warping. Second, after you hang your doors, you can cheat by removing the warp with a handplane. With the doors hung in the case, mark the one that sticks out. Use a pencil to draw a line on the edge of this proud door all along the place where it juts forth. Take the door off its hinges and plane the stile down to that line using a handplane. Re-hang the door and check your work.
