OK, so now that I’m back on track with this bookshelf project (doesn’t it seem like this project is taking longer than it should?), I am moving on to the joinery.  When last I left the frames for this project, I had cut the dadoes and grooves in order to put the shelves into place.

For the upper and lower shelves are a piece of cake – 1/2″ wide parallel grooves at 3/8″ deep along the length of the top and bottom boards to capture the shelves.  Since there is no problem with a cross grain situation, I will be gluing the shelves along their entire length to get the best contact possible.

Cutting these rabbets was pretty straightforward, but it did require a bit of care. I am having each of the shelves extend past the front of the unit by one inch.  This means that I had to hold the rabbets back that one inch from the front in order to keep the that extra material there to work with.

I went with my hand-held router and a rabbeting bit to cut the joints, and they were plenty easy with my DeWalt router. I held back from my one-inch line from the front, and simply squared the rounded edge the router bit left with a sharp chisel.

These were the easy ones.  I’m now going to figure out how to rabbet out the two middle shelves for the unit.  They are attached to the bookshelf sides with a groove that spans both the front and back uprights, and the front upright is at a slant, meaning my rabbet will need to have angles cut into it to match up with the sides…

This should prove to be  pretty fun…