My latest DVD with Popular Woodworking, “Build a Hand-Crafted Bookcase“ is expected to ship this week. It’s a 126-minute exploration of building the bookcase from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” entirely by hand using surfaced home-center pine.
The DVD begins by throwing out the modern idea of using adjustable shelves and discusses how the design was created and can be modified. From there we explore a bunch of different skills in detail suitable for the dead-nuts beginner (there’s way more detail than in the book).
Topics include:
- Surfacing boards with handplanes.
- Cutting through-dados with saws, chisel and a router plane.
- Making stopped grooves with a chisel and router plane.
- Making a tongue-and-groove back.
- All about cut nails, forged nails and wire nails.
- Why furniture makers should use hide glue.
- On using milk paint and why you shouldn’t use the instructions to mix it.
It was a fun DVD to make and we ended up with another bookcase for the house, allowing me to unbox some more woodworking books stored in the basement. The video is available as a DVD or as a download.
— Christopher Schwarz