The Office Bookend

    Last week I talked about building some bookends and I did work on that this week.   It was my goal to build this and not use any screws or nails in the process.   That is what I did.   As you can see from the picture to the right, all the pieces have wooden dowels installed into them and I did use some biscuits on the bottom corner part.    Over the past couple of years I have become a little more confident in using glue and pegs - or dowels.  I feel that when done the joints will be just as strong as if one used screws.

  The whole project was built out of wood from my scrap pile (remember - one of my resolutions this year was to use up some of this wood laying around).   For this project I used walnut wood with the exception of the bottoms of the drawers I used some 3/16's thick plywood.    The drawers are small and yet I think building a 4 inch drawer is just as much work as building a 24 inch drawer.   Maybe even a little more challenging.  (I'm not sure what this small drawers will hold.   They are pretty small.  Maybe 15 or so small Hershey bars.  Hmm.)

   Assembly was a little tricky.   Trying to get all the pieces to fit together with wet glue at the same time trying to hold all the pieces in place and not have some corner get out of square seemed a little difficult, but we got it done.  (Blood pressure reading may not have been too good at that time.)

   I finished it with 3 coats of poly.   In the past I have always applied my varnish with a foam brush, but for this project I used a regular brush.   I read in a magazine that one should use a regular brush - not a foam brush - so I thought I would give it a try.   It worked okay, but I still think the foam brush works well too.  I may have to ask around to see what others use when finishing wood.
  I glued a rubber mat thing on the bottom to keep the bookend from slipping.    When not on sale, it is $37.99 at Home Depot but this one is built by Dag's wood shop from scraps for free.   I even had the drawer knobs on hand.      
    Have a good week.