An oak bookshelf | David Serrano

This bookshelf is made of oak. It was built in 2023 during the summer after the bootcamp. It takes me 7 days full-time to build it. 2 meters high, 1.15 meter wide and 26 centimeters deep, it has 6 shelves. No screws, no glue, only dovetails. it was quite a challenge to build it. No mistakes were allowed.

It is located in the living room of my secondary house. Please, do abstraction of the mess around it. I am still working on the house.

Firstly, I made a sketch of the library on Fusion 360, helping me to calculate the dimensions of the different parts that i needed.

I bought the wood at the lumber yard. This is really an experience. A lot of wood, a lot of different species, a lot of smells and noises. I chose oak because it is a hard and noble wood. Had to drive really slowly to go back home. Some pieces were 3 meters long and outside of the trunk of the car.

I cut the wood to almost the right dimensions and glued the shelves. I had to use a jointer plane to make the shelves perfectly flat and a lot of clamps to glue them together.

After the glue dried, I made a template to cut the dovetails.

All the shelves together before cutting them to the right dimensions. Now it's time for the long board to be done !

I marked the long board and cut it with a japonese saw. Process was quite long. I had to cut 12 dovetails. I used a chisel to remove the wood between the dovetails. I had to be very careful not to make any mistake. I had to cut the dovetails in the right direction. It's work needing to be very precise with a lot of patient. One milimeter of mistake and the dovetails won't fit together.

Nevermind the mess ! I assembled the library and put it in place. I had to use a mallet to make the dovetails fit together. My other half was very skeptical about the strength of the library without nails, glue or screw. She did the first assembly. WE used a lot of patience to make it perfect.