Since watching the episode on Roubo’s folding Book stand on the woodwright’s shop I wanted to make this fun little project. So in this blog entry I will quickly describe and show how I approached this project. It also doesn’t help that everyone is making this project right now through the Holidays.
First I started with a piece of Cherry I had, which was about 6 1/2″ wide. The width I went with was 6″ final width, cause that’s what I had on hand. Originally I wanted to go with 8″ wide, but 6″ worked just fine to hold books. I went with 17″ long. The width dimensions are all preference and what you have on hand. Of course 4″ would be to small in my eyes.
I started planing and jointing the rough piece of Cherry to get started on marking out the Hinge joint.
I marked a line 6″ from the end, which is the starting point of the hinge.The line gets transferred around the board. Next I scribed a line in the center all around the board, which will guide with sawing later on. I set my compass to half the width of the board and drew a circle. This needs to be done on both sides.
A line needs to be marked on both sides of the circle all around the board as well as the center of the circle as shown below.
I set my divider for 5 spaces for the hinge, this is preference , but an odd number is needed to make this work and look good .Then as seen in the picture below on the right , the 5 spaces need to be staggered and marked for chisel work. Note that both faces are not marked the same, but opposite.
Next I drilled holes as straight as I could by hand. The hole size was the sizes of my spiral fret saw blade. The holes are drilled on the upper intersections of the marked joint as seen below. I have seen many different tools to cut out between the joint , but the fret saw with a spiral blade worked great for me. And yes you have to remove the blade 4 times , but that didn’t bother me.
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Once all the lines were cut down with the fret saw , I chiseled out the waste as seen below. Most of these Book stands I have seen have a 45 degree angled joint, but I went with the circle .
After all the waste was chiseled out, I went ahead and sawed down the center line. To help cutting this joint by hand, I started with a dovetail and tenon saw and went all the way around. This gave me straight lines to cut with the rip saw.
I marked the design of the legs and top before, but this can also me done after and the design is all preference too. I used my Gramercy bow saw, and my Florip Tools dovetail saw to cut out the waste , and the cleaned everything with a rasp , and some sandpaper.
I cross cut off the bottom book rest 3 1/2″ from the joint. Seemed ok for me and looks not too bad. I also added a chamfer on the bottom. The I went ahead and chamfered all corners and sides, so that I have no spelching out for when cross plaining the surfaces.
Before putting the finish on I added a small decorative on top . Its a simple homemade punch with a design in it that I made for carving. Makes the piece look not to plane.
Last was putting a finish on, and for that I used Danish oil. This project is nice, cause it took me only about 4 hours by hand. Thanks for reading, and I hope this blog entry was informative.
