How To Make Detail Cuts

So once you have your six main pieces of plywood, you are almost ready to put them together. But first, you must make some detail cuts on the front piece, the 72" by 30".

This is the actual bookshelf part, the cubbies where the books will be stored. The first cut falls 4" inches below the top of the shelf. Cut a 26" by 22" rectangle.

The second cut falls 2" above the bottom of the shelf. Cut a circle out with a diameter of 26". The circle is 2" from each side of the shelf.

You have now completed the detail cuts of the bookshelf, and once you put all the large pieces of plywood together, we will explain how to make/insert the actual shelves in these detail cuts.

Broken Tools

So yesterday...there were some accidents.
As we were cutting a circle out on the front piece of plywood, the blade snapped off. Then, we went to work with a handsaw to saw off the jagged edges (that looked like shark teeth) of the circle, and that completely fell apart too. Luckily, it has happened before so it was put back together, but yesterday was one helluva day of broken tools. Whoops. Hopefully tomorrow will go better =)

Wicked Sweet Nasty Awesome

Material: Plywood

-->30" by 10" (x2)
-->72" by 10" (x2)
-->72" by 30" (x2)


Mixing Art & Engineering
Our bookshelf is not only practical, useful, and holds many books, but it is modern and based off of a popular item, the iPod! Whoooooo! We are having an artist come in and paint original designs on the bookshelf to make it more appealing to the eye.

Ipod Now Holding More Than Just Music

Our Prototype.

Before with the prototype, we were able to make it easily but with a few obstacles on the way. Some of our measurements were off, so when we glued the pieces of cardboard together, we needed a lot more glue to fill in the empty spaces. When we were drawing and measuring the lines for the ipod's inner circle we were sure how large it should be in comparison to the rest of the somewhat simple rectangle shape. It took hard work while measuring and cutting, but each problem was resolved with just a little more thinking and planning ahead. Pre-Drawing the lines and trying out different measurements works when trying to find the right sizes and how they will appear in the larger scale model, or the actual bookcase itself.

After creating the prototype and starting to build the actual bookshelf, we were faced with more errors. Nobody's perfect. While cutting the wood we used different saws. We used the table and skill saws. The table saw seemed to be the hardest to use. With the variety of saws that we used, we couldn't cut that straight of lines. Sometimes our lines we cut would be slanted to the ones we drew in pencil on the wood. Other than the off lines, we are faced with the problem of how we are going to glue, staple, or nail the wood pieces together to stay durable as a bookshelf. Another problem we were faced with while cutting our bookshelf was when we cut two opposite sides that are supposed to be equal in length and width. Sometimes they would be off, and when we put them on top of each other they would not line up. One of the sides was bigger, etc. We fixed this problem by cutting down the bigger piece to fit the other one's size. When we were trying to cut out the circle inside the bookshelf that acts as the scrolling button, we lacked the jig saw and couldn't cut it out as easily. We had to use a hand saw which took more time and more effort and it was annoying and very hard to cut neatly.

In this blog, you can learn how to make an innovative and new design of your average bookshelf. Instead of just a boring rectangle, why not switch up the norm and create an I-pod shaped bookshelf that holds the same if not more books than before. This shelf is worth building because it is an easy design, a simple rectangle, and has many other compartments that hold books like opening doors in the rectangle screen of the I-pod shape.

On a typical I-Pod, there is a circle that has your play and pause, skip buttons, etc. This part of the I-Pod is represented on the book shelve as a circle indent in a rectangle frame that has many shelves in a circle holding books every which way. The I-Pod bookcase comes in all the colors of the original I-Pod Nano, including silver, green, pink, blue, and black. Sometimes I-Pod's have interesting covers, just like our bookcase can be painted to match that cover.

The I-Pod bookcase can be custom painted to match any design that comes to mind. All bookcases have the Apple seal on the back with the GB amount to add a realistic touch to each one. Build a bookcase to match your I-Pod! Our bookcase is simple to make because it is made of wood for the base and shelves and glass for the screen part of the I-Pod. It has many compartments to hold books, and it has a cool look that will out do any boring bookcase that's currently in your living room.

Working hard as a team to measure and sand our wood to be smooth and the right size we need.