Baby Rattles

These are all turned out of a single piece of wood. I used a mixture of a Crown “Capture Ring Tool”, which is a kind of shaped scraper. It’s pretty good, but obviously the temptation is to push to hard which burns the wood. As I got more confident I started cutting the rings with just a skew chisel which gave a much better finish and allowed me to cut rings of different thicknesses and even profiles!

Childs Rattle

Childs Rattle

Childs Rattle

Childs Rattle

Childs Rattle

Toys

Some of these are based on plans from Tremendous Toy Trucks which is an excellent book for getting ideas. I didn’t follow any of the plans completely, i’ve varied each one, but I can’t deny where the inspiration came from.

The “Racing Car” and “Simple Car” are both my own design. There is also a “Dumper Truck” (from the TTT book) which I don’t have any pictures of yet.

Simple Car

Racing Car

Tow Truck (Front)

Tow Truck (Rear)

Off Road Truck

Furniture

The following are all various pieces of furniture I’ve made. In addition to these items I’ve also made two ash bed side tables, a maple side-board/cabinet and another plain and simple mirror again out of maple. I don’t have any pictures of those yet, either.

The mirror shown here is all hand-cut joinery and is made from maple. The cot’s joinery was done mostly with a router and is made from ash. It has slept both of my daughters and now rests in the loft.

Open Frame Mirror

Maple Cot

Miscellaneous

This small pot is made from yew and is finished with standard “wood turners polish” and a wax stick thing which makes it nice and glossy. I particularly like the detail on the inside of the lid.

Yew Pot

Yew Pot (Open)

This flower sculpture is actually made out of an old Christmas tree. The vase was turned as normal. The stem of the flower was turned, but by tightening the tail-stock I bent the stem slightly which meant that as it was turned it gave a very uneven finish – which is what I wanted. The head of the flower was roughly turned and then hand-carved to finish. The bit of the flower between the petals and the stem (I don’t know the correct term) had the same treatment. It was all then glued together and given to one of my sisters for her birthday.

Flower and Vase

I’ve also been making lots of bowls and candle-sticks, but again I don’t have pictures to prove any of that.

If anyone wants any more details on how these things were made then please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get back to you.

Hopefully, no one is sat around with a bunch of MDF planks in their garage waiting for the next installment, because it has been a silly long time between the previous one and this. I can only apologise and blame the same previous excuses plus the addition of my broken and now wired back together finger slowing me down.

As usual, here are the links to the previous steps, please pay attention to the Health and Safety disclaimer in part one.

1. Part 1: A Dolls House Bookcase
2. Part 2: Roof and Windows
3. Part 3: Making the Windows

8. Clear Up

Now we need to clear some room. You’ll need enough space to easily lay out all the shelves and sides etc. We’re going to dry fit them togther, take it apart and then glue/screw it back together again.

Aside: Word to the wise

Now might be a good idea to paint your pieces. When I made mine I didn’t paint it until it was assembled. Laying on the floor with your head on a shelf trying to paint the underside of the one above is not fun. When I make the next one I will definitely be painting it before assembly. Of course, the choice is yours!

I painted the inside of the case gloss white, apart from the top and front of the shelves which is custard yellow. The outside of the case if the same custard yellow. The roof I painted a light grey, because I didn’t have any slate or tile-orange paint handy.

9. Dry Fit

The first step when assembling furniture is always to do a dry-fit first. With the dry fit it very easy to take it apart again, trim/true up anything that needs it without feeling any pressure about the glue curing (or indeed, getting covered in glue).

Lay one of the sides on the ground face side out – so the rebates are pointing up. You might want to lay it on something to avoid damaging the face side. Now carefully insert the shelves into the rebates taking care to line them up on the front of the bookcase. Check that you have the correct amount of clearance on the back of your shelves to take the backboard. Remove any shelves that you’re not happy with and trim them down to the correct size if necessary. Or, worst case, make new ones if they’re too short.

Advice: Clamping Up

If, like me, you don’t have enough (or long enough) clamps to hold the piece together then I suggest you drill some pilot holes and use screws to hold the piece together until the glue is fully dry. Make sure you only drill the hole when the shelves are at the perfect 90deg angle to the side and that you drill straight and true. If you drill the hole when the shelf is at the wrong angle, then the screw is going to keep trying to force the shelf into that bad angle.

Once the glue is dry you have the option of removing the screws and filling the holes prior to painting (or repainting) or countersinking the screws and filling over them. I left the screws in thinking that any addition strength they offered could only be a good thing.

Once you’re happy with the shelves on the first side you can dry-fit the other side. If the fit is good you should be able to carefully lift up the unsecured book case and stand it upright. It’s at this point that I checked the whole thing for square (using a framing square) and drilled the pilot holes to take the screws.

10. Glueing Up

Depending on how well your dry fit went, it’s now time to glue the piece together. Take it apart, put a generous amount of glue in the rebates and put it back together again. You need to work as quickly as possible to keep the glue from curing prematurely, also on unfnished MDF glue seems to be absorbed and dry much more quickly than on “proper” wood. Don’t forget to wipe off any excess glue before it dries and it’s much easier to do that now than scrape dry glue off a (possibly painted) MDF surface.

Advice: Glueing MDF

Because MDF seems to absorb the glue which makes it cure much more quickly there is a trick you can pull which involves “sealing” the MDF prior to properly glueing up. To do this on this project is very easy, just apply some glue to the rebates and spread it thinly across the entire rebate surface. This will leave a thin smear of glue on the MDF. When this dries, and it should dry quickly, you’ve effectively plugged the pores of the MDF with glue, so now apply the generous amount of glue and follow the instructions above. Because of the first layer of glue, the second will not be absorbed so quickly and will therefore give you more time to get your clamps on/screws in.

If you’re using clamps, leave the piece for a good few hours (or over night depending on which glue you have used) than begin the next stage. If you used screws and not clamps then you can carry on as long as you’re a bit careful.

11. Putting the Back On

The back of the cupboard is pretty easy to put on. The only difficulty comes from if you’re making it out of two pieces of board. I used two pieces of hardboard for mine. In this instance, make sure that the seam between the two pieces runs horizontally across one of the shelves. This way you can nail both pieces to that shelf, they will both be supported by it and it won’t show from the front that two pieces have been used.

The easiest way to mark out the cuts you need to make is to put the back against the book case and then mark out where the hardboard overlaps the book case itself. I didn’t bother using any kind of tape or measuring device for this stage. Remember to overcut slightly, so you can plane down the back to a perfect fit.

If you’re painting before assembly, once you have cut the back piece(s) paint them before nailing them on. Otherwise just nail them on now. Be careful when nailing MDF, it’s not as forgiving as real wood. Use thin nails with round heads, using thicker nails will just result in the MDF splitting, which weakens the board and obviously greatly reduces it’s grip on the nail. Obviously, you want to make sure you’re nailing through the back and into the shelf, so do some careful measuring. The good thing about using MDF is that we’re going to paint it, so if you make a mistake it’s not a problem. A bit of sandpaper, filler and paint and no one will be the wiser.

Gluing the back in unnecessary. The back is just to stop books falling off and to provide the frame with some diagonal rigidity. However, because it’s MDF there is going to be minimal (or no) movement with humidity, so there is nothing to stop you gluing it if you really want to.

12. Final Few Touches

On looking at the bare frame I decided that the top shelf, i.e. the “attic” of the dolls house, could do with a lip on the front and back. This is completely optional, you can only see it when the lid/roof is open but I felt it would help keep little fingers from reaching things on that shelf until those little fingers where on arms long enough to be trusted to get into it!

Depending on how much of a lip you want, cut some MDF however high you want the lip and as long as the inside measurement of the attic. Then just glue it in place. You can either glue it vertically or along the same angle as the roof. Since the lip provides no structural support choose whatever matches your design better. I stuck mine on in such a way that I needed to the plane the top leading edge of the MDF plank so that it was at the same angle at the roof. Gluing the lip futher inside the attic would have negated that need. I also put one on the back because I wasn’t happy with how the back board looked through the attic. Having the lip at the back effectivily hid that particular mess!

The final structural piece is the kick panel underneath the bottom shelf. Carefully lay the case on it’s back and measure the distance between the bottom of the bottom shelf and the bottom of the sides. You’ll need a plank that tall and as wide as the inside measurement of the book case.

For this piece, I used a thick piece of real wood that I had laying around. My thinking was that this step is going to get stood on by (short) people trying to reach the top shelf (recent experience proves me correct) and so a bit of extra strength would be good. As well as being of the dimensions mentioned above, this piece of wood is also about 3″ thick, so it’s pretty sturdy. Simply apply a good amount of glue and stick this piece on. I also applied some screws so I could carry on working while the glue was setting.

A further thing to mention is that I inset this piece by about 5mm simply for design reasons.

Advice: Shelf Strength

If you’re wondering how strong the MDF shelves are the top shelf of my daughters book case is completely filled with books and I haven’t noticed any sagging let along creaks or cracks. Also, when she empties the middle shelf, she’s found that she can quite easily climb onto it (by standing on the bottom shelf!) and roll into a ball in the middle of it. She’s an average 16 month old (however heavy they are) and although the shelf does sag a bit, there has yet to be any cracks or broken shelves. I think it’s strong enough.

13. Fitting the Roof

Fitting the roof can be a bit fiddily to get right. First of all, if you’re painting as you go, I really recommend getting up to date with the paint work before continuing. Even if you’re not painting as you go, consider painting the top shelf (the attic) now, as it’ll be much harder to do when the roof is on, and that includes the underside of the roof itself.

The first thing you need to do is cut some planks to make the roof, you’ll need two planks the same size. Use the straight-edge or a table saw as discussed in part 1 to cut two planks, roughly 2″ wider than the book case to create a roof overhang. Measure the length of your diagonals on the bookcase sides to work out how wide they should be. Don’t forget that if you want an overhang on the front/back of the bookcase then you’ll have to add a few inches here also.

Once you have the planks ready to go you will need to mitre a long edge on both pieces. Only do this if you want the top of the roof to form the correct ‘point’, if you are happy with the angle of the roof pieces not matching the top angle of the sides then you don’t need to bother.

The best way to measure the angle you need it to hold a piece of scrap agains the side of the cupboard as if it were one of the roof peices. Now draw a vertical line up from the very pinacle of the side, carry this line across your scrap piece and you now know what angle to mitre the real roof planks.

Once the roof pieces are mitres (or not) you need to fix them to the book case.The roof piece on the back of the case is fixed, so it’s a simple case to apply some glue and screw it down. Making sure to counter-sink the screws so you can apply filler to the holes later. (Or just remove the screws once the glue has fully dried.)

Now hold the front roof piece in place and mark where you want the hinges to go. (If I forgot to mention it before, go and buy some hinges.) Using a sharp chisel cut out enough of the roof to allow each hinge half to be set flush with the edge. Once you have done this for both front and back, you can screw the hinges onto the front of the roof. Next comes the tricky part. Holding the front of the roof with one hand, screw the other side of the hinge onto the back of the roof. I found that doing it this was, rather than back-and-then-front was slightly easier.

With that done, you can trim the overhang of the roof if necessary and continue applying the finish. Remembering to lightly sand around where your screw holes are before applying the filler. When the filler has dried another light sand and some paint and you’re done!

Advice: Word of Warning

I strongly recommend that once finished you leave the book case somewhere with lots of ventilation to allow all the paint fumes to fully disipate before moving it into a child’s bedroom. I personally left my daughter’s to air for a full two weeks before putting it in her room.

Okay, so the third installment took longer than planned. I personally blame work, personal life and a broken motorcycle. But what can you do?

If you missed it, Part 1 is here and it includes a Health and Safety disclaimer, so please read that if you haven’t already. Part two, is here. Anyway, on with the instructions…

5. Clean Up

It’s always a good idea to stop between stages, sharpen your tools, put them away and sweep up all the saw dust. I recommend you do that now. Pay particular attention to tidying your work surfaces. Making the windows is tricky. You need to make sure the mitres match up nicely and it’s easier if you have a nice clear surface to work on.

6. Preparing the MDF for the Window Frames

To make the window frames you need two types of MDF, or at least two different thicknesses. The thicker MDF (say, about 10mm thick) needs to be in a long strip about 10-15mm wide. We’re going to to cut that at right angles to make several window sills. (The bottom part of the window frames).

The second thickness of MDF (about 4-6mm) needs to be but into a strip about 15-20mm wide. We’re going to cut this stip at both 90deg and 45deg to form the other three sides of the window frame. Obviously the exact thicknesses of the window frame components is completely up to you. Choose a good pair of thicknesses and widths that compliment the size of the windows that you’ve cut.

7. Assembling the Window Frames

I used contact adhesive to glue the window frames onto the shelf sides, I found that because of it’s (almost) instant bond it held the pieces in place without me worrying about leaving the glue to cure and knocking pieces out of alignment was I worked on a different part.

The other piece of advice I’d give is cut each piece of wood just before you need it. If you’re anything like me you probably can’t measure or cut straight, so cutting out a whole bunch of bits and mitreing them is just asking for touble. Instead just work on one frame at a time. Having said that, I made and glued on each window sill of all the windows before I moved onto working on the frames themselves. That’s just my system, I’m afraid that you’ll have to find your own.

Before you cut any wood up though, take some time to mark on your sides the outer edges of where you want the frames to be. I didn’t cut the window appetures out very well, so I made sure that my window frames overlapped the appetures to hide that fact.

The following pictures shows a window frame in progress.

You can see I’ve already glued the window sill and the right-hand window frame in place. I’ve applied a layer of contact adhesive to the side of the book case and another to the top of the window frame and I’m just waiting for that glue to cure before I put the frame in place.

So how did I get this far? Firstly, I drew where I wanted the outer edge of the window frame to be onto the book case sides. Then I measured, cut and glued the window sill in place. Now taking a rough measurement of the window frame strip I made a 90deg to get me a small piece of wood slightly longer that I needed it to be (this if the right-hand side of the window frame I’m talking about now).

Holding that 90deg cut against the window sill I could then mark exactly the long edge of the 45deg mitre I needed to cut. With that marked, I could draw a 45deg line across the stip and cut it with a saw of my choice. Then I used some sandpaper to lightly round over the edge of the frame, applied the glue and stuck it on. That’s the right-hand side of the window frame done.

Now comes the first tricky bit. Again, measure for an oversized piece of MDF to be the top of the window frame and cut that at 90deg. (So you now have another rectangle of MDF.) Hold it against your pencil line for the top of the window frame and mark where it meets the long and short points of the mitre in the right-hand side frame. Join those two marks up and cut along the line. You should now have a mitre on one end of the top of the window frame that exactly matches the right-hand side piece and lays exactly along the pencil line on the shelf side.

Tip: Mitre doesn’t quite match…

If the mitre doesn’t quite match, that’s not a problem. Just use a piece of sandpaper to remove a small amount of material until it does match. The trick is to only remove a very small piece at a time and to concentrate on which part of the mitre you need to remove waste from! Remember, it still needs to form a 90deg corner when you’re done.

Worst case scenario is that it leaves a few gaps which a bit of filler and paint will hide anyway, so it’s doesn’t have to be 100% exact!

Phew.

Now, on the top of the window sill, mark the longest part of the next 45deg mitre. This is going to be on the far left-hand side of the left-hand upright. Measure a 45deg angle from that mark, cut and glue onto the piece the wood. The following picture shows this happening;

Lastly you do a similar thing for the third piece of the frame. Make sure you leave enough time glue on the last piece you stuck on to cure nicely so you don’t knock it out of alignment. To make the final upright (the one on the left-hand side) cut a 90deg angle strip, hold that against the window sill and in the same way as before mark the angle against the top-piece of the frame, i.e. mark where the two edge of the top piece are. It doesn’t matter if this isn’t exactly 45deg, it just has to match up. Mark and cut the line. Sand and glue as before.

Now, repeat all that for every window you want on your book case. You can experiment with which way works best for you. I found that making the two sides first was a bit easier than doing side-top-side, but it’s a personal preference thing.

Summary

When you’ve done all this you should have some nice window frames on the outsides of your book case. Even if the mitres aren’t exactly 45deg they should all more-or-less match up, but it gives a very nice level of detail. One final thing you can do is glue in some center detail. You can see from my pictures that I cut out one large hole for every window. I then went back and glued in a single upright in the middle of the hole to provide an extra level of detail. That’s another design option available and subject to preference.

Next time it’s the assembly of the work piece and you can really start to see it take shape!

It’s been a busy time. My daughter has had her first birthday, which was a fun time, and I’ve changed jobs. So I’ve not had much time recently to put up the next steps in making this project. My apologies.

If you missed it, Part 1 is here and it includes a Health and Safety disclaimer, so please read that if you haven’t already. Anyway, on with the instructions…

3. Cutting the roof

Cutting the diagonals to form the roof is easy. Clamp the boards together face-to-face making sure that the front and back edges are aligned. Mark where you want the roof to come down, remembering that the top-shelf will be the floor for the ‘attic’ and just use a handsaw to cut both pieces at the same time.

Tip: Don’t look too closely

As if you needed proof that this instructions are being written after the fact, you can see from the drawing that I haven’t yet routed the dadoes and rebates in the bookshelf sides. If I had to make another one I would definitely follow these instructions. (It’s hindsight great?)

Look how I’m cutting out the roof though, it’s very easy.

4. Cutting Out The Windows

Next you want to make the cut-outs for the windows. You have a number of options here.

1. Don’t bother, you can just leave the windows or paint them on afterwards.
2. Buy some pre-made dolls house windows and cut out corresponding size holes – this can be expensive
3. Make your own windows to fit the scale of your book case

I’m going for option three, I’ve found that dolls house windows can be pretty expensive (ranging from £10-20 each!) and since I need three for each side that’s going to be more expensive than buying a pre-made bookshelf! I also like the additional detail that a “real” window will give.

The first thing I did was to clamp the two sides together, so that the outside of each window was pressed against the outside of the other. i.e. so the rebats we cut in the sides to take the shelves are on the outside of the wood. I also clamped them to a bench to make working on them easier – since they don’t slide around now.

Next I needed to work out what size to cut the window apetures. I didn’t take too much time deciding this, since each shelf is a different height I didn’t like the idea of a fixed height window, so I just used my best guess to decide “how big can I make the window on this shelf and still leave enough wood to maintain strength”. All the windows are the same width, only the heights differ.

Tip: Marking Out The Windows

An engineers square is really useful for marking out. You can slide the ruler part along the square part to adjust how far away from the square the end of the ruler is. You can now run the square part down the length of the wood with a pencil held against the end of the ruler and you’ll get a perfect line drawn which is parallel to the side you ran the square down. I used this method to make sure my windows were perfectly centered. (i.e. I did this down one side, then down the opposite side without paying too much attention to how many millimetres wide that made the window itself).

Now we’ve got the windows drawn, we can start cutting them out. Before you do that you should drill a hole in all four corners of your window, making sure that the drill bit stays within the pencil lines of the window. Now you’ve got all four holes drawn you can use a jigsaw to cut along the inside of the pencil lines. Take your time on this, set your jigsaw up so it’s at the right angle and blade speed for the wood your cutting, and push the jigsaw along slowly. The slower you do it, the better/straighter the cut will be because you can control the saw better. I also find that running my hand along the edge of the wood, with my finger-nails pressed up against the base of the jigsaw helps to cut the a straighter line. Some jigsaws come with a guide that you can run against the side of the wood, I can’t comment on that approach since my jigsaw doesn’t.

I would recommend that you cut the two sides in this sequence, short-side, long-side, short-side final long-side. Cutting the a long side last means you’ve won’t vibrate the cut-out like you would if you cut a short-side last. (That comment will probably make more sense when looking at the wood your cutting.)

Obviously, because the two sides are clamped together we’re cutting out both sides at a time in exactly the same place with gives a nice kind of symmetry and means we don’t have to spend too long making boring jigsaw cuts.

When I made this book case, I cut out a single rectangle for every window. I then had to add back in a vertical piece to make it look like the central divider of the window. See image below;

If I had cut out two rectangles for every window I wouldn’t have had to do that. Another thing you can see from the image is how badly I cut out the original window appetures. From the outside that’s not a problem because the frames hide the holes. So if you’re as cack-handed as me don’t worry. We can hide that.

It is possible to cut out the window appetures perfectly using a router and a template, but that’s probably an article all on it’s own.

Tip: Tear-Out Again

Problems with tear-out again. When using a drill you can often suffer from tearout (like in the router example above) when the dill bit exits the wood. We try to keep the effects of this minimised as much as possible by clamping the two sides together so their outside faces (i.e. the visible ones) are on the inside; hence we won’t get any tear-out. Now if we do get any tear-out it’ll appear on the inside of one of the sides and that can be easily filled or ignored because it won’t get noticed.

We can further reduce the effects of tear-out by clamping a scrap piece of wood to where the drill bit is going to exit our work piece (this gives the same effect as having the face sides clamped together). I didn’t bother with that, all I did was to make sure to use a sharp drill bit on a high speed and push down very lightly and slowly. This reduces the violence that the dill bit comes out of the wood, and that therefore reduces the amount of tear-out you might get.

You might also be worried about tear-out on the top piece of wood from the motion of the jigsaw blade. This can be minimised again by moving the jigsaw slowly, but also using a finer-tooth blade in the correct setup. If you are really worried then you can run a craft-knife along the pencil lines (remember you’re cutting inside the pencil lines!) which will help to reduce that tear-out. I’m using MDF and I didn’t bother with this step, I found that a fine-tooth blade and moving the jigsaw slowly gave me a good enough finish.

Summary

So now we’ve almost finished the sides of the book case. The only thing that remains is to make the windows (or glue them in if we bought them). Making the windows is pretty easy, but can be time consuming because it is fiddily. I shal deal with making the windows in the next article which will hopefully appear more quickly than this one did!

In addition to plonking away at a computer (see my other blog), I also spend a fair amount of time in my garage making things out of wood – and not just saw dust.

I have been making the furniture for my daughter’s bedroom starting with her cot. And now she’s got her own book collection I figure it’s time to make her a book case. My wife one she liked a catalogue but it was really expensive (over £60 if memory serves) and considering I can buy a sheet of 8x4ft MDF for £15 making my own seemed like a bargin.

This book case pretty cool. It is shaped like a large doll’s house with windows in the sides and the roof lifts up at the front for putting secret girly things in – mostly likely to be nappy related stuff for a while. I built it from a single piece of 8×4 MDF and some 6mm hardboard which I used for the back. Anyway, I thought it’d be nice to share the steps I went through to make it and offer any thoughts and tips I came up with as I progressed.

Do I need a disclaimer?

This article contains a description of my own actions and things that I have done myself to make something out of wood (well, MDF). I’ve used some pretty big power tools that are more than sufficient to cause serious injury or death. If you follow any advice or instruction given in this article you do so completely at your own risk. Some of the “advice” I give may be contrary to the instructions you would have recieved with your power tools (such as making a backwards cut with a router) if you decide to do this you’re doing it at your own risk. I accept not responsibility to any injury to your person, any one elses person, any property, tool or building material that may occur from you following any of the instructions in this article.

It’s all on your own head, you have been warned.

1. Cutting the panel into planks

This project was made out of MDF, I know it’s not real wood (which I prefer working with) but since it’s going to get painted I figured I may as well use it and save myself the hassle of having to glue up any large panels.

The first step is to measure the depth of the largest book and thus determine how deep the bookshelf should be. Since a lot of my daughter’s books are pop-up cupboard and/or chewable I needed a fairly deep one, I settled on 12″. Now I need to rip the MDF board into some planks. I used my table saw for this.

Aside: Vital statistics

The dimensions of the book case I made are 12″ deep, 4′ high and 3’10″ wide (4′ on the roof).

Simply clamp a straight piece of wood 12″ away from the blade, then feed the MDF through, you’ll then get a bunch of 12″ planks. I had to get someone to help me with this step since the MDF was quite heavy and kept trying to tip the table over.

Tip: I haven’t got a table saw!

If you don’t have a table saw you can just use a circular saw or jigsaw. But I recommend making an 8″ straight edge to run the saw down first. You can then clamp this long straight edge to the rest of the panel and use it to run your saw along to make the rest of the cuts.

It doesn’t matter if the line you cut isn’t 100% straight, the factory-cut edge is completely straight so you can use that as your guide (remember to mark it). Now, measure the distance from the blade of your saw to the edge of it’s bed. Clamp your newly cut straight-edge onto the remainder of the board that distance from your first cut. Run your saw along the straight edge to true up the edge of the big panel. You’ve now got your MDF board with a nice straight edge, and you’ve got an 8″ straight edge you can use to make more cuts.

Still with me?

If you’re using this method, only cut off one plank (for now). But a word of warning; when you cut your straight edge, make sure it is wide enough that when you clamp it to the workpiece, the clamps won’t interfer with the overhang from your saw. Obviously this won’t be a problem for jigsaws, but it will affect circular saws .

Aside: Change the dimensions to suite your project

Obviously, depending on the dimensions you want to make your bookcase dictates on the most efficient way to cut the panel. Spend some time with a bit of paper working out the best thing to do. You might be able to get away with making a 4′ straight edge and making the cuts along the short edge of the panel.

Making the sides

Now take one of the panels and rip it in half to make two planks; 12″x4′. I took this opportunity to clamp them together and using a combination of a saw and a router with straight edge, make sure that both the sides are identical and 100% square.

Tip

Clamp the straight edge to the work peices and use a long straight cutting bit to true up the edges of the sides. It’s best if you can keep the work pieces clamped together whilst you move the straight edge around to do the other edges. You only need to do this to three of the edges, the two long ones and the short one that will become the bottom. (Remember, we’ll cut the roop into a pitched angle.)

Now mark the front, back and face sides on each planel, it’s good to do this when the boards are still clamped together so that when you separate them the sides you marked match each other.

Next clamp the boards front-edge to front-edge. That is, both boards face-down (so can cut into the inside faces of the book case but with their front edges meeting in the middle and both bottom edges at the same end. This kind-of gives us a board that’s about 4′x2′ to work on. Mark where you want the shelves and also where you want the bottom of the “roof” to be. The top-most shelf will form the bottom of the roof-cavity of this dolls house. For my daughters book case I used a stepped approach. The bottom shelf is 12″ tall and the roof if 10″ tall. The other two shelves are positioned so that each shelf is slightly shorter than the one below.

Again, using a straight edge and a router (with a straight cutting bit the same width as the MDF), cut a dado along each of the shelf lines about half the thickness of the MDF, which in my case is 6mm. We will be putting the shelves themselves into this grove that is being cut. We clamp the two boards together so that we can cut the grooves for the shelves in both sides at the same time, helping us to make sure that they’re at the right height and even.

While you’ve still got the router out, unclamp the two boards from each other and cut a narrow rebat in the back edges to take the back of the book case. This only needs to be about 6mm deep depending on how thick you want to make case backing. (I used 6mm hardboard). Remember, in this case “deep” means the distance from the back edge, the depth of the router bit should be kept at the depth you used to cut the dados. My router has a guide that I used so that only 6mm of the cutting bit was exposed. Then I ran the router along the back edges from the bottom shelf to the top. (Or you could do something similar using the straight-edge again.)

Tip: Breakout

A common problem with using a router to cut a dado or rebate is “break out”. That is when the cutter exits the work piece some of the wood tears away instead of being cut nicely. This isn’t as much of a problem with MDF as it is with real wood, but it can still occur. You can do one of two things to counter this, the first is to clamp a piece of scap wood where the router bit will break out and cut all the way into that.

The second is to cut backwards for a short distance from the exit, then go and cut the groove from the start. An explaination is probably necessary. Usually you would use a router and push it right-to-left. If you instead make a very short cut (an inch or so) from left-to-right, remove the router from the workpiece and then make your right-to-left cut, you can avoid having breakout happen.

Summary

That’s it for now. I need to upload some more photos before we can continue. To summarise though we’ve done a lot. We’ve cut our original work piece into planks. Cut the sides out and made dados and rebats in them perfectly aligned to take the shelves and back. Next we’re going to shape the roof, cut out the window appetures and make the window frames. That’ll be for later though.