Bookcase Plans - Bookcase and Bookshelf Designs Made Easy

My Thoughts about Building a Bookcase

I can't think of a better first-time woodworking project than a simple bookcase. I can always use another bookcase or bookshelf somewhere in the house, even if it ends up in my basement filled with tools. But the best part about building a bookcase is that it teaches you how to build just about anything from wood. Plus, I really like the fact that I don't have to buy expensive lumber to get started. That's good news for beginners, just in case things don't turn out as well as you like first time around. Just buy more wood and try it again. Once I got the hang of using the tools, I was a little more comfortable buying more expensive wood and materials, like cherry or maple hardwoods. For now, we'll just concentrate on getting some inexpensive wood from a home center and figure out how to make the pieces come together.

Buying Bookcase Wood

I know it seems like there's a lot of wood to pick from at a place like Home Depot or Lowes. But let's narrow our choices down a bit and just look at two options: plywood or solid pine.

Plywood is a good choice for bookcases and shelves because it doesn't warp as easily as solid-wood boards. That means I can usually go with longer shelves and maybe even thinner pieces of material (save $$) and still have the same strength as a smaller bookcase made of solid pine. Personally I don't especially like long shelves that are unsupported in the middle, so plywood doesn't really give me any benefit in that regard. However, plywood helps me avoid other problems that come with using solid boards, like expansion and contraction when the weather changes (see more about this below).

It's funny that before I got into this bookcase project, I probably wouldn't have considered using plywood. Mostly because I thought plywood was kind of a rough, down and dirty material - something that roofers nail down to the top of a house...and certainly not something for making furniture. Boy did I have a lot to learn. For now, just let me say that I've since made some really attractive pieces of furniture with plywood. Of course now I know where to look at Home Depot for the better quality grades of plywood. And believe me, you can spend just as much money on high-quality plywood as solid hardwood boards. So let's just keep in mind that plywood might very well be the better choice for building a bookcase. You'll have a pretty good idea which way to go after reading through all this.

Solid Wood Boards

Even with all the benefits of plywood, there’s still something I like about using solid wood lumber. Maybe that’s because all the antique furniture I like so much is made that way. Sure, the problems that come with solid wood construction are painfully obvious in 100-year furniture - wobbly legs, loose joints, open gaps between boards. But just think how amazing it is that solid-wood furniture can hold up as well as it does…for that long. The real culprit for solid wood construction is humidity…or rather, changes in humidity. Wood is like a sponge. It soaks up moisture during warm, humid summers and then gives it all back in winter when everything turns dry. It’s not really a matter of one environment being better or worse for wood. It’s the constant back and forth, season after season change that does the damage.

Of course, if I could figure out a way to keep a room consistent in temperature and humidity twelve months out of the year for the next 100 years I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. Or I could be more practical and just be aware of what my solid wood projects will have to endure over the next few years, and maybe use a few construction techniques that will help keep the damage under control. That’s the more realistic approach, and one that woodworkers have been using for hundreds of years, long before plywood ever came around.

First we have to accept that solid wood is an unpredictable material. Aside from the moisture problems I talked about, solid wood is full of natural inconsistencies from one board to the next--thickness, grain, density, knots, twists, bends, warps--all unpredictable features in wood that I have to account for differently with each board I pull from the rack. And maybe that’s the reason woodworkers like solid wood so much…knowing that every project will always be unique in one way or another.

My reasons for using solid wood in a bookcase are probably not that warm and fuzzy. But I do understand and appreciate the quirky nature of wood, which helps me do a better job of planning and building projects. So, when I decide to use solid wood boards instead of plywood, here’s what I stop to think about before I get started.

Bookcase Moisture content

Wood will always hold some amount of moisture, regardless of how wet or dry the weather is. Of course, a board is most wet the day it gets cut down in the forest. After that, boards go through a multitude of drying steps just to get the moisture level down low enough to ship to stores. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the boards you bring home from Home Depot are ready to go. Ideally you want the moisture content in wood to be around 10-12 percent before you start cutting and gluing boards together. Problem is that most wood you pull off the rack at a home center is going to be at about 20 percent. So in a perfect world, you would let the wood dry for a couple weeks in your garage or basement to get the moisture content down.

What happens if you don’t? I’m sure plenty of people have built their bookcases the same day they brought home the wood. A little risky, though. The moisture content of fresh-bought wood will inevitably drop…sometimes from 20 percent to 10 percent…in just a few weeks. That’s definitely going to cause some shrinking. If you’re lucky, your wood joints will hold on and keep everything together. If you’re not so lucky, you’ll see some pretty unsightly gaps opening up around the joints. You’ll have to decide for yourself how much risk you want to take here.

Straight and Square…or Not

It’s tempting to pull an 8-foot length of 1x12 of the rack and think that it’s ready to be cut up and glued together. Problem is that dimensional pine lumber is not always perfect for bookshelf plans. Length, width, and thickness can vary from one board to the next. That can be a problem when you start to assemble pieces together…they might not line up. So using solid wood boards (instead of plywood) means you’ll have to take a little more care in choosing boards off the rack…making sure you pick boards with as little warp, twist, and cupping as possible…and then double checking things like width and thickness before you start cutting and assembling pieces of your bookcase plans together.