Final Stage

Here I am again, eking out the last little bit of wood from the original yellow birch plank for the Jeffersonian Book Stand. This is precious stuff, so I've planned the waste for the bevel under the book ledges to include this serious check in the wood. It worked out fine (I had almost a sixteenth of an inch to spare!) and the side panels were glued up and shaped without a hitch.

A little bit of edge softening. Friendly edges... gentle to the touch.

Getting back to the base, I made a few small brass brackets to attach the stand to the platform.

The last major operation for the bookstand is to make the folding brackets that support the hinged panels. I'm using fairly thin wood for the brackets, so I need to make sure the screws that attach the hinges to the brackets have good solid material in which to engage. There isn't enough wood there to do the job, so I inlaid a pair of brass bars into the back of the bracket. The hinge is mortised into the opposite side and the screws engage firmly into bored and tapped holes in the brass.

I shaped the sides of the brackets with a plane iron supported by a wooden block clamped beside the bracket in a vise. The photo below shows me cutting the long grain. I followed up by doing the angled cut in basically the same way.

What looks a bit like a welding operation below is me routing out the mortises in the stand for the brass brackets that I made earlier. It was a long reach for the router, so I needed to figure out a set-up that gave me light where I needed it... from below.

Next, the brackets were attached to the back side of the panels with a couple of brass screws.

After attaching the brackets and hinges, I was able to then plane down the ends of the brackets to achieve the proper length and angle for supporting the panels.

A little bit of edge softening and finishing of the last few surfaces was all I needed to get it ready to show. Below you can see the book stand temporarily on display at Xylos Gallery in Minneapolis. On Thursday last week, I invited the client who commissioned this project, as well as a number of friends and fellow woodworkers, to see the completed piece.

I'll be posting final photos of the piece in the website gallery soon. Be sure to check back and let us know what you think! It will be great to hear from you.

Hej då!

Craig