C&R Storage Rack

[mrandig]

With the sides taken care of for now, we'll start with the top shelf.

If you're taking notes, this board is 36" x 5-1/2" x 13/16". A little bit of math may follow over the next few posts. I'll try to explain my figuring the best I can and accept any questions after I post this.

I'm going to space 8 holes 4" apart (center-to-center), spaced 1-1/2" inches from the leading edge. I'm going to cut these holes out on the drill press with a 2" forstner bit.

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The drill press is my Jet, and I'm pretty fond of it. We've been through a lot together. The table on the press is a homebuilt job, so that's not available in stores. The forstner bits I'm using are Ryobi from HD stores - don't buy these; they're pretty terrible.

[mrandig]

So, a total of 8 holes are needed, spaced 4" apart.

This is a pure material removal exercise. You'll need to go really slowly to limit binding, burning and the debris building up. I think I'm down around 400rpm. Even then, there's a fair bit of burning, in part due to the cheap bits. I think I mentioned the Ryobi bits were crap...

Once the jig is squared up, and everything is in the right position, it's just a matter of cutting hole after hole after hole. Taking pictures while operating rotating equipment is generally a bad idea, so I don't have many action shots of this step.

The amount of material taken out is immense, so you'll need some way to remove the debris while cutting. If you wait until after to remove it, then you're working blind under a pile of shavings. I have a little shop vac that I attach.

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[mrandig]

With the cutting done, the finished piece should look something like this...turned out great. We'll turn all of these little circles into "u" shapes on the bandsaw later, but I want to leave these holes alone for now.

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So, to summarize (this is where there's a little math involved):

1. The board is 5-1/2" inches wide.
2. A brace (cleat) will sit perpendicular to the trailing edge, taking up 13/16" of the total width. The usable width will then be less than 4-3/4".
3. From leading edge of the board to the rear of each drilled hole is 2-1/2".
4. 2-1/2" subtracted from 4-3/4" leaves me with 2-1/4" of space between the rear of the drilled hole to the front of the rear brace.

Why did I do it this way? Because that 2-1/4" space is the distance needed if any of these riles have scopes attached.

[mrandig]

Some people accidently get into car crashes, hit by meteors falling from the sky, scalded with hot coffee, etc. I accidently buy rifles apparently. I've also got an 1891 Argentine Mauser coming soon, which was also an accident. Not sure when that's supposed to arrive, as I understand that the mail is all tied up.

Speaking of accidental gun purchases, I accidently bought a little Mosin today while I was working on this cabinet. Looks like more cleaning supplies are going to be needed. At least it has a "really good bore" per the auction listing. I find that statement suspect.

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[rcathey]

I’ve had very good luck buying from that auction company. I think you’ll be quite happy!

I didn’t win anything from them today. Sure wouldn’t have minded a couple of the Walther PPKs they had!

[mrandig]

I didn’t win anything from them today. Sure wouldn’t have minded a couple of the Walther PPKs they had!

I had four pistols I was looking at today. Two were Deutsche Werke Ortgies, one was a Polish PPK copy in 9mm Makarov. They came up for sale late in the day, and I was on the couch watching TV by then.

Usually, I'll start hoping that I lose after winning the first or second item. If I pre-bid, it's always a very low offer, but sometimes it's high enough. Depends on who else is playing that day. When the former Lt. Governor of TX's estate sold his firearm collection, I ended up with a bunch of his mausers, as I don't think I was bidding against anyone else. Then I had to tell the wife we're taking an unplanned romantic getaway over to Austin for the weekend.

Huge auction coming later this month on the 17th. I think I have around 35 items tagged out of 1200+ up for sale.

[mrandig]

Day-do, day-do
The top and sides are done, and me wanna go home...

Actually, with the top and sides partially complete, now we have to figure out how to attach the bottom shelf. Remember earlier, I said I was going to try to avoid using screws for this project, just to keep things challenging. That may also be a large part of the reason why I'm not done already, but oh well.

There really isn't anything to do with the shelf, other than some trimming and fitting, but we'll do that in a bit. For now, we're going to make some dados. A dado is groove cut into the wood, using stacked blades on a table saw. Cutting wood like this across the grain is a "dado", where cutting along the grain would be considered a "rabbet". Same cut, different direction. This can also be done using a router, but I don't feel like taking apart my router table today.

You may have seen the orange Rigid table saw in earlier pictures. I actually use this table saw just for dados and rabbets, so I don't need to take my big Grizzly apart. First-world problems, I know...

Wear gloves when changing these blades out, as it's really easy to get cut. A few sample cuts may be necessary, so I always test my setup first. One thing that 3/4" thick plywood is not, it's not 3/4" thick. Usually it's more like 23/32", so some tweaking may be required for a tight fit. You want it snug enough that there's purchase on the bottom and both sides, but not too snug that you have to force it in.

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Looks good. The other sides looks and measures exactly the same. Now the shelf will fit right in, snuggly but not too tight. I made the cut 3/8" deep on each side, so we should only need to trim 3/4" from the bottom width and we'll be good to go.

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We'll glue and clamp the top, sides, and bottom together later. Before I can do that however, I need to first drill for some dowels. We'll use these to attach the top, toe kick, as well as the cross-braces.

[mrandig]

Dowels go in next. I'm going to use dowels to join the top shelf and the toe kick to the sides. I finally decided against using dowels for the rear cross-braces, as it would be just to align and drill correctly, and I can cheat using pocket screws and nobody will ever know.

I'm using two jigs for the dowels; the first jig keeps the drill centered in the wood, and the second jig allows me to transfer the position of a dowel from one board to another. Both tools work really well. Remember to chamfer the holes so the dowels don't bind. Test fit everything.

I'm using 3/8" x 1-1/2" birch dowels. Since the wood is 13/16" thick, I'm probably drilling 9/16" deep into the cross pieces, and 7/8" down into the side pieces, as I don't have to worry about poking through the sides.

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Yes, I didn't realize it until I saw my pictures, but I'm wearing slippers. Since COVD-19, the dress code has been pretty loose around here.

[mrandig]

I used the title "fitting" for this post, as it's now time to test fit everything together, but also due to the fact that getting the toe kick to sit correctly was giving me fits all morning. For final assembly, there may be a little nail gun action.

That said, after getting all the holes and dowels lined up, and cutting the bottom by a little over 3/4", it looks like we almost have a gun rack....

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The top still needs some work, so this is a trial fit only. I'm pretty happy so far, considering how well everything lined up, and also the fact that not one screw has been involved.

[mrandig]

Now that everything's been cut, test fitted, and assembles the way I was hoping, it's time to get back to work on the top shelf.

I had originally drilled a total of 8 holes, 2" dia. each. Now we have to make them into "u" shapes, in order to hold the riles. I'll mark my cuts using a straight edge, then do as many as I can on the bandsaw.

The bandsaw will however, only cut pieces of a certain width, so I'll cut the left holes, then flip the top piece over, then cut the right holes, and then use the jigsaw for those holes in the middle I can't reach. I personally hate my jigsaw, and can't seem to get good results, but I never think to replace it until I'm in the middle of cutting something...

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I'll be honest, by this point I wasn't happy. I was not on top of my game today, and the top piece was looking like a hot mess. These were rough cuts however, so we'll see what things are like when the top is closer to being finished.