Shaker Hanging Shelf - Stock Preparation and Jig Construction

Beautiful Grain!

I decided to prepare the stock for this project first in order to give the wood time to settle down before I cut it to final size. Stock preparation is covered in my September 22 and 26 entries so I won't repeat the steps here. I had two lengths of 4/4 cherry approximately 5" wide. Resawing with the band saw gave me the 1/4" and 3/8" thick stock I need for this project. The grain this revealed is quite beautiful.

I felt it would be worthwhile to construct a jig for shaping the sides of the shelf unit rather than using templates as I did with the Shaker Sconce. These were useful but not especially convenient, so I also plan to create jigs for those pieces sometime soon. 

Layout

I chose 1/2" MDF for the base of the jig because it is inexpensive, durable and reasonably easy to work with. I began by transferring dimensions from my measured drawings (see 10/12 blog post) to a 7"X24" piece of MDF, allowing an extra 2" on three sides of the jig for the hold-downs. Not having french curve handy, I used a flat washer and my gooseneck cabinet scraper to lay out the curves.

Tapering

The tapering jig I described in my last three posts worked perfectly for cutting the diagonal line visible along the top of the MDF. I simply aligned the ends of the cut with the left side of the tapering jig, tightened the hold-downs, and ran the whole thing through the saw using the miter gauge slot to guide the jig. The resulting cut was smooth and accurate.

Sawing One of the Curves

With the taper cut, I moved to the band saw to cut the two curves in the jig, a small one at the bottom and and a more graceful, longer curve at the top. Using a 1/8" wide blade in the saw, I cut just outside the lines I had drawn being careful to stay on the waste side of the cut at all times.

Cleaning up a Curve

The band-sawn cut was too rough to use as it was to guide a pattern bit on the router table, so I smoothed out the irregularities using a sanding drum in my drill press. Experience has taught me that the slight ripples left by the saw are transmitted by the router to the piece being shaped with the jig, so they must be cleaned up.

Gluing Down the Guide Strips

My final task for the day was to glue down guide strips along three sides of the jig to provide positive positioning for the work piece. I make the strips from 1/4" masonite and glued them to the base taking care to align them with the layout lines I had made. Although I would eventually like to add toggle clamps to the jig for convenience, for the present I plan to drill the base for hold-downs like the ones on my tapering jig.

The next step will be to cut the side pieces of the hanging shelf to length. I will need to dado these to hold the shelves before using my new jig to trim them to shape. I may have to take some time off from this project to work on my Etsy store front as I hope to be open for business by November 1 and still have much to do...