Long Board Book Shelf
At a certain point, you just have too many skateboards. I made this book shelf as way to store extra hardwood decks that I had made. (Honestly, the get more use displaying all of our trinkets than they wood as a skateboard.) This project allowed me to run wild with hardwood board designs while still creating something that our whole house could use. At the outset, I worried that the final product would look a little hokey, but I actually kind of like the way it turned out.
Required Resources: 25 hours, $150
Size: 9" x 32" x 0.75"
Materials: Assorted Hardwoods.
Finish: Minwax Natural Stain, Semi-gloss polyurethane aerosol
Tools: Band Saw, Planer, Jointer, Miter Saw, Stationary Belt Sander, Orbital Sander,
New techniques: Long Boards 4-ways
MAking the Blanks
I'd made hardwood decks before but I decided to experiment with variants of wood choice, shape and pattern.
About 12 board feet of various woods I would use to make the boards. Pictured, from left to right: Wenge, Hard Maple, Padauk, Zebrawood, Yellowheart, Curly Maple, Purpleheart, Lacewood and Walnut.
Herringbone, a new pattern! I've done a bunch of straight line rips and I wanted to try something a little different for one of the boards. The glue up was a little more difficult than the average board I make, but the board turned out just as sturdy.
The blanks for the 4 boards I'd use for the book shelf. Now to decide which shape to cut out of them.
The Boards Take Shape
Blanks done. Now to shape and finish the decks.
I spent some time thinking of new and intersting deck shapes for the 4 boards. I settles on a fish tail, a pintail, a twin tip and another pintail with wheel well cut outs.
Just going for it. I set these up in the MetaBeam and let the laser do its thing. Within 3 minutes the board has been cut to shape (mounting holes and all) and I'm ready for the next one.
Finishing up the decks - The boards required a bit of planing, routing, sanding and polyurethane-ing to get them to a finished state. In all each board took about 90 minutes to complete these final steps. I was pretty pleased with the way they turned out.... and, also a little bummed that I wasn't going to get to ride them.
Constructing the Shelf
With the boards finishing, the last step was to put the shelf together.
Steel pipe and pipe flanges I bought a Home Depot. These don't come cheap, but they are convenient and add a bit of an industrial aesthetic to a project. Just make sure to keep them dry to prevent rust. If you live in a damp/humid climate, a clear coat or biannual oiling should keep the rust at bey.
First couple shelves assembled! It was fortuitous that the hole spacing on the pipe flanges was nearly exactly the same for two of the holes as it was for a standard skateboard truck. I bolted everything together with skateboard hardware. The whole assembly went together like a dream.
The finished shelf. It was a little wobbly at first, but it just required shimming of the feet on one side. We've started putting books and other trinkets on it and no structural issues yet! Each board was intended to hold a full grown adult, so if there was to be an issue, it would mean that we had far too may books on it (and probably a few chunks of lead).
Lessons Learned:
Padauk: The Red Plague - (From: Red Herring, Fish Tail) The red wood used in this board is called Padauk and it is heinous to work with. No, it doesn't check when planed like zebrawood, nor does it tear out on the table saw like bird's eye. It actually "machines" rather nicely. But, when sanded or sawn, Paduak produces a super fine, almost noxious saw dust that gets everywhere. After only 2 minutes with the orbital, the shop becomes hazy with Padauk dust. Without a respirator you may find yourself in a perpetual coughing fit. When the dust settles, it leaves a red patina on every surface in the room. And no, not just on the horizontal surfaces like most hardwood dust. Padauk dust is so fine that static buildup on the floor, on tables, the walls, even ceiling draws it cling. Additionally, when sanding a piece with mixed woods, the red Paduak saw dust grinds into the other woods. If you have Paduak adjacent to a light colored wood, it may be forever stained a pink-orange tinge. Yes, properly finished Paduak is stunning; but, is it worth?
Finishing Takes Time: (From: Thin Strip Twin Tip) This board had 4 woods (Wenge, Lacewood, Zebrawood and Purple Heart) that have very coarse and interlocked grain structure. this means surface level tear outs and checking are common occurrences when planed. These blemishes can be eliminated in a number of ways. First, I could have sanded down the last 1/32" of an inch instead of planing. Sanding does not create the tear outs or checking that planing does. Also in woods with a naturally coarse grain, sanding tends to fill in the large pores with saw dust, which can be sealed in place with a finishing polymer. Unfortunately, without a specialized tool like a drum sander, removing that much material with a handheld belt sander or an orbital might take an hour or two. I've done it before. Yes, it was terrible. The second method is to use wood filler to fill in the pores; then sand flat. Since the wood filler is opaque, you must match your filler color with the wood. Otherwise, you may being highlighting the pores, instead of obscuring them. The third way to create an aesthetic finish with these woods, is to introduce a thorough sanding step between each finishing coat. The sanding step cuts the polymer coating back to the point that the polymer in the pocket of the pores is now flush with the top surface of the finishing coat. This is my preferred method of finishing when working with these woods.
It's a Bird('seye Maple), Don't Plane! - (From: Curly Maple Pin Tail) Bird's eye maple is renowned for its beautiful shimmering figure. It's also loathed for it's interlocked grain and propensity for tear out. Imagine typical, unfigured wood as a bowl of jello. Planing the wood is analogous to taking a knife and cutting a sliver off the top of the jello mold. Now imagine there's jelly beans in you're jello (gross, I know, but just go with it.) The jelly beans ares the "Bird's eyes" of the Birdseye maple. If you attempt to cut a sliver off the top of the mold and hit a jelly bean, the bean is ripped out through the jello, leaving in its place a crater where is once resided. This is what happens with figured woods like Bird's eye. A planing pass looks like it going well and, BAM! a chunk is torn from the surface, ruining your near perfect finish. You can mitigate this problem by making sure you planar blades are super sharp and taking small passes.
Thick Boards are Heavy Boards: (From: Lacewood Dagger) I left this board ~40% thicker than my normal board. I wanted a little extra strength. Unsurprisingly, this board ended up %40 heavier than the other boards I made. Being as heavy as it was, this would not make a very good commuter board. To make it more suitable for commuting, I could have planed it down to the standard 0.5" and it still would have been plenty strong. Alternatively, I could have planed it down to 0.375" and then fiber glassed both faces.
