My latest obession is the free version of SketchUp and today I used it to design a simple CD shelf. For materials, I had a 5' long 6"x1" piece of red oak which at a nominal 5 1/2" wide just happens to match up perfectly with the size of a CD jewlcase.
First I used SketchUp to play with how I wanted the shelf to look. Because the CDs aren't going to weigh very much I decided to simply attach two end pieces to the shelf with dados and hang them using keyhole cuts in the ends. Here is the final visualization:
And a detailed view of one end piece, with dimensions:
To build the actual shelf, the first thing I did was mark up the cut lines on one of the end pieces. The mechanical pencil lines were hard to see, so I enhanced them in this picture:
The first cut was the 3/8" deep dado. The dado comes first because I need the long board to be able to use this handy dado jig I made a while ago:
Now I moved over to my (super handy) Makita sliding compound miter saw to cut the end piece to length and make the 15-degree angled cut:
And just like the first end piece is finished (minus the keyhole):
The opposite end is the same except the dado needs to be cut on the opposite face.
This was the first time I tried to cut a keyhole using my router and I was a bit unsure of how to set up for the cut. I ended up clamping stop blocks on my mini router table as shown. Connecting those two blocks with a third across their face probably would have made things easier. But it worked:
With the cutting done I glued and clamped the ends to the shelf:
To finish the shelf I gave it a coat of stain, and that's where I ran into a bit of trouble. I'd gone a little heavy on the glue and where some of the spill had been didn't take the stain. I'll have to figure out how to avoid that problem in the future... Hopefully it isn't too noticeable:
If you'd like to see the model in SketchUp, you can download it from
the 3D Warehouse.
