Desktop Bookshelf, Part 2

In part 1 of this build, I mentioned there were two tricky things to deal with.  The first had to do with marking the mortises within the dadoes that would house the small tenons of the shelves.  I wrote about that in the previous post.

The second tricky thing was to mark the shoulder line of those short tenons.  This may not sound so tough, but here's the thing.  In the beginning of this build, I ganged the two shelves and three back rails together to mark their common shoulder lines.

Bottom shelf, top shelf and three rails ganged together for marking

For the shelves, this marked the shoulder line of the notch that allows the front of the shelf to sit outside the stopped dado.  I'm not sure of a better way to describe this, so I'll show it in pictures.

Lower shelf extends past front of side

With lower shelf removed, you can see the 3/8" deep stopped dado (and three mortises)

With shelf shown and side removed, you see the notch at front of the shelf
that fits over the end of the stopped dado

Here's a closer pic.  This is the shoulder line that I marked when
 shelves and back rails were ganged together.

But the shoulder line at the base of the short tenons was the one that was hard to figure out how to mark.  I tried using the actual pieces to mark it, but it was tough to hold the parts in the right position.

Holding the shelf backwards (relative to the side into which it fits), with the first shoulder line sitting flush with the side. 

In this closer view, I'm marking the tenon shoulder line with a pencil

I would have preferred to mark this with a knife, but I found it hard to get a knife in there so that it would be positioned correctly.  This worked out OK, though it was not perfect and the joints needed a bit of fettling.

Once I determined the location of that shoulder line and squared it around the shelf, I placed the shelf into the dado and marked the tenons through the mortise holes.  Then I cut away the parts that weren't tenons, down to that shoulder line.  The shelf tenons ended up looking like this:

Upper shelf tenons and front notch

The three back rails were dovetailed into the sides, a half inch between rails, and the lot of them centered between upper and lower shelf.

Back rails dovetailed into the back edge of the sides

I shaped the sides, cutting away a curve that started halfway (9") up the front and ending halfway (5") back on the top.  After putting a round-over on the front edges of the shelves, a dry fit made it look like something.

Dry fit looks good

I wanted to reinforce the small tenons, so I sawed a kerf in them and glued in small wedges during the overall glue-up.  As it turns out, I don't think the wedges will help much, if at all, because there was too much wood either side of the kerf to bend easily and tighten against the mortise walls when the wedges were driven in.

Glued in wedges to strengthen the joints

Clamping the bookshelf to clean up the glued joints was a tricky matter.  I used the method where a couple of battens are clamped to the workbench, overhanging the front edge of the bench.  The bookshelf is suspended on the battens.  This worked pretty well - first time I ever tried this method.

Using battens to hold the bookshelf for joint flushing

Then used chisels and a plane to pare away the proud tenons

Finally, I glued a piece to the rear of the top shelf, then gave it a couple coats of shellac and put it in its final home.

Gluing on the "upstand"

A couple coats of shellac gave it a nice golden appearance.

And here she is loaded up with my woodworking books and an old woodie

It was a good, relatively quick project.  Now it's on to other things.