Whats A Bastard Wall Cabinet Without More Shelves

The plane shelf Ive built into the Bastard Tool Cabinet is designed to fit my bench planes. Since Ive already got a few specialty planes (shoulder and router) and Im sure that I will acquire more, I made the plane shelf lift on a hinge. In the triangle shaped plenum behind the plane shelf Ive mounted two standard, horizontally installed shelves.

The Shelf Pieces Test Fit.

In order to install the shelves behind the plan shelf, I began by resting the semi-assembled cabinet on its back. I then took two cutoffs of 3/4" Baltic Birch plywood I had left over from cutting the carcass components and slid them under the plane shelf. I positioned each one as high as I could, given the clearance behind the plane shelf, and took a look. As my dumb luck would have it, the cutoff pieces ended up being just the right width. I made a pencil mark under the edge of each shelf and pulled them out.

Squaring the fence for the Domino.

Next I flipped the plane shelf out of the choice and using my Woodpecker 12" try square, I extended the shelf marks perpendicular to the carcass side. I cut the shelves to length and began Dominoing.
In order to reference the Dominos in the back of the carcass, I clamped in a temporary fence along the bottom edge of the shelf positions. I referenced the bottom of the Domino machine against this fence and used the retracting pins in the face of the machine to determine the Domino frequency.

Dominoing the shelf ends.
The notes will hopefully prevent
me from screwing the matching
Dominoes in the carcass side.

In order to Domino the shelves, I clamped them flat to a piece of OSB and referenced the back of the Domino machine against the OSB sheet. Even though I havent begun to Domino the side pieces (or the top, back or bottom of the carcass for the side pieces) I decided that Dominoing the ends of the shelves to attach them to the side piece would be too difficult after they were installed. In order to pre-Domino the shelf ends I again clamped the shelves to a piece of OSB which I referenced off of. In order to account for the fact that when I Domino the side it will be referenced from the back of the cabinet I used a 3/4" Baltic Birch spacer to set the location of the first Domino in the drawer ends.

Clamping the shelf.

When the Dominoing was finally complete I glued in the shelves one at a time. I squared the shelf using my Woodpecker Clamping Squares and because the shelves only run the 16" width of the plan shelf, rather than the full with of the cabinet carcass, I used a rather oversized piece of TimberStrand as a caul so that I could ensure clamping pressure at the inside edge of the shelves.

Arent Dominoes pretty?

With the two shelves installed behind the plane shelf, my planned interior organization is done (Ill figure out the rest after the fact). Now its on to finish assembling the carcass.
Do you remember to install hard to reach interior components when you should, or do you fight them into a finished carcass?
Other Bastard Wall Cabinet Posts
Winter Wall Cabinet Wonderland
The Bastard Wall Cabinet (for tools!)
Trudging Towards Tool Storage
Cutting the Cabinet Carcass (in relative terms)
A Home For My Planes
Continued Wall Cabinet Assembly

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you never know whats next

one of our long time clients brought us this mini diorama yesterday.  his cat had pushed it off its special spot on top of a corner cupboard we built for him ... apparently, he was after the bird, or was just annoyed that there was not enough space on top of the cabinet for him to stretch out.  anychoice, well fix just about any worthy old thing and this one was certainly that.  it was a masterfully constructed piece, gold leaf, thin antique glass, the ground and sky was beautifully painted, and the little fox and the thrush were stuffed and posed and perfectly preserved.  there is even a little feather in the foxs mouth.  kinda cool, but at the same time, kinda creepy to some folks too.  stuffed wildlife is not for everyone.  its headed back to its home tomorrow.  it was also an interesting lesson in minimalist display case construction ... weve built a few of them, and this one was a great example of the craft.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

in addition to the fox, we also cleaned what we think are the last items from our clients fire that happened back in 2009.  its been a long, but interesting and rewarding process as they had an unusual number of actually quite exotic items, including some of our furniture, some elephant spears and a painted six board chest that had been in the family for over 300 years.  heres the last of it ... 

 a pair of carved ivory and sandalwood letter openers ...

 this unusual triptych mirror that could be a free standing, or wall hanging object

 we never did figure out the exact medium ... it didnt seem to be paint and it didnt seem to be enamel, but whatever it was, it was beautiful, and beautifully executed ...

 and then we were taxidermists, cleaning and mounting an impala skull to a board that the client supplied.  the first step was to fill the porous skull with bondo and flatten it.  next we drilled a pilot hole using the little mdf jig and tapped it for a 1/4 x 20 stove bolt

 that tightened up nicely, but the skull still spun so we carefully added two sheetrock screws to fix it in place ... whats coming next week? you never know ...

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