Yesterday my friend David and I got going on a custom sized entertainment centre for his family room. The reason it was being built rather than purchased is it has to fit a particular space, instead of buying something pre-existing and being satisfied that it fit the space okay. Our unit will fit the space exactly and the shelves will match up with the units on either side, making for a more comfortable visual result. I will include a photo once the piece is installed.
The reason that this began as a two person project is it began life as a full sheet of 3/4 plywood. A 4 by 8 sheet of plywood fills my shop's floor space almost completely and so I need extra help to move the sheet stock around to make it work at all.
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| the pieces cut out |
The top shelf is a butt joint held together with pocket hole joinery.
The shelves are set into the sides with dados. I used my straight edge to cut the dados using my Bosch Colt and a 1/4 inch straight bit. The shelves were also glued and screwed.
Since the piece is going to be stained very dark and the sides aren't going to be visible I inset the screw heads and used filler instead of wood plugs. I also needed to use filler in the edge of the plywood, it had more voids than I expected. The front of the unit will have raised panel type doors fitted in the near future and so the filler is adequate to the needs of the project. If the edges were going to be exposed I would have glued solid wood on.
Not having to break my back moving the plywood around and having a very good plan, (David's wife drew a very exact plan for us) made the job much easier than the last time I tried making furniture in my basement work shop. We don't usually admit this but...having someone else worry about the sanding and staining is nice too.
cheers, Ian W
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