Giraffe Bookcase

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9 entries

1 Introduction, Design, and Prep Work

This series of blog posts describes the design, planning, and construction of the giraffe bookcase I built in 2021 for my daughter, son-in-law, and...

2 Cutting the Case Parts

I found four good 8' long, 12" wide, 4/4 poplar boards at the lumberyard, along with a 4' long, 7-1/2" wide, 8/4 board for the legs. Theoretically,...

3 Dowel Joinery

Before I could start drilling the dowel holes in the part faces, I had to make the angle-specific drill guide blocks I mentioned in a previous post...

4 Cutting the Legs

Cutting the legs turned out to be one of the most troublesome parts of the project, and the part where I made the most mistakes. My original plan ...

5 Routing the Tail

The giraffe's tail is is a compound shape formed by a circle, ellipse, and trapezoid. [06.00 Tail Dimensions.jpg] I made a template and used it to...

6 Head Details

The giraffe's head is one of the more complex parts of the bookcase because both it and its horns and ears are removable (the former for transport,...

7 Gluing the Case

 The glue-up part of a project is always nerve-wracking for me, and this project was no exception. Dowel joinery helps a lot, but it doesn't totall...

8 Attaching the Legs

The final woodworking step was attaching the legs to the case. As with everything else, I used dowels. The front legs were straightforward. I used...

9 Painting

In my last painted project (a sideboard), I used General Finishes Milk Paint, and I painted the parts before assembly. I don't think the GF paint i...