The Jeffersonian Book Stand has now found its proper home with the Minnesota collector who came to me with the idea for this piece. It's really been a fun project!

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.

I've been anticipating the moment of truth; that time when the most critical parts are fitted together. That time is now...

A short section of railroad track is just the trick to hold the post in position while the glue sets. Just don't bump into it!

Before we get to the actual test drive, let's recap what's been happening this week on the Jeffersonian Book Stand. I've been working through the details of all the carousel parts.

The last of the miter glue-ups is done. Here you can see one half of the veneer edge band miter at the corner of the top book panel for the Jeffersonian Book Stand.

Let's take a moment for a couple brief detours.

First, "Goodbye summer." There... it's over.

Hello again! It's time for a little smoke and mirrors... well, mirrors anyway. I've started playing around with the bird's eye veneers to see about the best way to match them for the side panels of the Jeffersonian Book Stand.

I wasn't kiddin' in my last post about the large number of glue joints. Take this one parquetry panel for example; 64 pieces in the checkerboard pattern and 4 pieces in the border. That adds up to a whopping 67 fit/glue operations.

With nearly 300 individual pieces of yellow birch wood and Baltic birch plywood already in the queue for the Jeffersonian Book Stand, you might be able to imagine how many separate glue-ups are involved in the entire process.

I've been eagerly anticipating this part of the project. After so much time spent preparing the substrates, etc., I'll finally be joining together these four sweet yellow birch heartwood veneers to form the top of the lower platform panel on the Jeffersonian Book Stand.

Not so cool. The shop fan is a life saver. Although it's cooler in my basement shop than it is outside, it's still hot. A dew point of 82° F. is more of a don't do point for me.

Step 1, actually shown at the end of last week's post, was to lay out the mortises. I'm using floating tenons, so I'll be cutting mortises into both parts.

Around the photography activity this past week, I've been multitasking my way through several parts of the Jeffersonian Book Stand. Cutting the veneers revealed a very consistent quality to the wood throughout the depth of the planks.

The wood selected for my next piece has been seen before. I'm using off cuts of maple and birdseye maple from the drawers of the Entry Hall Mirror as well as yellow birch from the same plank as the Love Letters Box.