Three Board Book Shelf

I found this idea on the Net late one night and sadly can't remember to whom I owe credit for this tidy little plan.  It is not my design but I think I am going to play with it, look for sliding dovetails in the near future.

The layout is very basic, but clean and pleasing to my eye.

You start with about 22 inches of 5 1/2 inch pine, planned to 3/4 inch thick.  The base is about 12 inches, the long side 7 inches and the foot 1 inch.

I cut the long piece off the board and put two 3/8inch dadoes square across the board using the mitre fence on my JessEm router table.  When I marked out the board I was careful to shade in the places where the wood was going to be cut away, that way I didn't end up with the dadoes on the same side.

 I set my JessEm Tool Setting Gauge to set the router bit at exactly 3/8 inch deep for the dadoes.  The gauge locks into the depth settings with a solid brass lock nut and sits on a large enough base to free up both of your hands for adjusting/setting the machine.

Next I used the same 3/8 inch setting to cut rabbets on the end of the shorter of the two boards.  HINT:  cut both rabbets and then cut the 1 inch off the end.  It is much easier and safer to work with a board 8 inches long rather than one 1 inch long.

The final step was to stain the book stand with dark walnut aniline dye in water and put a coat of spray on varnish and wax over top.

The end result is a good little shelf for music books on top of our daughter-in-law's piano.