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These are the small scale drafts for the two cases. One will be a four glass door case and the other a four section shelf. Both are about 11' wide, 5' tall and 1' deep.

Here's the shop drawing to show all the joinery in the case. I've created a stock list (bottom left) from this drawing that I'll use to buy lumber.

Fresh from the lumber yard! 180 board feet of quarter-sawn white oak. This is enough material for everything minus the shelves. I'll buy that once the cases are built.

The book case will be built first, then the bookshelf will follow. These are the rough milled parts for the bookcase body.

I'll be using hide glue throughout the process on both pieces.

The side panels are being glued up now. They are still over thickness and will be milled down to 1/2" once the glue dries.

This is the crosscut sled I use to cut pieces to length. The long adjustable L stick allows multiple pieces to be cut to the exact same length.

Each surface is planned to remove any mill marks and leave a smooth finish.

My bench is the perfect length for this project!

The center posts have a 1 1/2" wide body with a 2 1/4" wide foot which will later get tapered. This is the setup I used to cut the 3/8" off each side of the post. Once the first cut was made I went and temporarily glued blade kerf-sized shims in between the post as the cutoff. This allow the second cut to be made with the same fence setting, keeping the post symmetrical. The shims were popped off after the second cut was made.

The off-cuts break off and the remaining wood will be chiseled and scraped flush.

The four outside posts have grooves cut into them to accept the floating panels. The side rails also have these grooves cut into them.

The top center cross-member is a dovetail joint that will drop down from above to join the front and rear center posts.

Cutting the dovetail socket into a center post.

Here the joint is dry fit snug. This will be glued in permanently later on.

Here are the center posts with the dovetail joints dry fit together. There will be a twin-tenon cross member on the bottom of the feet. The feet will also get tapered once the front rails are cut and fit.

I'm sizing the joints. This is the process of applying a diluted cut of hide glue to the joint beforehand and letting it dry. The theory is that this dilute cut will sink deep into the pores of the wood and act like the roots of a tree once the full strength glue is applied and the joint is clamped together.

Now it's time to mill the wood for the door stiles and rails. All of the wood will come out of three boards which are prefectly quarter-sawn and very straight grained. The horizontal rails are cut up and I placed them back together to show how they will be aligned. Planning out the layout of these parts carefully will visually unify the bookcase. The vertical rails and stiles will also come from consecutive boards to unify the piece even further.

The ship-lapped back will be made out of bookmatched 5/4" resawn boards. This will allow me to make the entire left half of the case back perfectly symmetrical to the right half. Here Jonathan is helping in the resaw of a wide 12 1/2" wide board.

Here's the back material, still over thickness.

The backs have been milled to finish thickness and now I'm rabbeting the edge of the ship-lapped backs. The fence setup holds the pieces down to ensure the rabbet depth is even throughout the cut.

I'm using my trusty #80 cabinet scraper here to remove the mill marks from the back. After a proper sharpening the scraper plane is working better than ever!

This is a piece of 3/16" MDF I've cut up and drilled holes into to use as a template for the shelf peg drilling process. I will register the bottom end of the template at the same elevation on each piece to be drilled to ensure the holes line up and the shelves are flat.

Once the first hole is drilled one of the pegs is placed to register the template. Three more will be places even spaced throughout, then the remaning holes are drilled.

One upright is finished and two pegs are in place. All of the holes will be as hidden as possible. The holes for the fronts of the shelves will be drilled on the backside of the uprights. The holes for the backs of the shelves will be drilled on the sides of the uprights.

All 528 of the 1/4" round holes have been drilled!

All the mortises for the case frame and door frames (shown here) have been cut and it's time to cut the tenons to fit. Thanks KPW for the time on your mortise machine!

A closeup of the said mortises.

Here I've cut and fit the twin tenon on the bottom of the center posts.

The legs are getting tapered on both inside faces. To achieve this I cut close to the line on a bandsaw then cleaned up the marks with a hand plane, making sure to stay 1/16" away from the rail mortise.

Using this hold down on the cross cut sled I'm cutting the tenons for the case frame. The blade height is changed for the front and back cuts of the tenons because they are offset.

Here I've made a sample board for the finish on the case. The four different sections are different ratios of Transtint Brown Mahogany dye (1:16, 1:32, 1:64, 0:0), then a sealer coat is applied. After that dries a glaze is applied to color the pores of the wood. The final step is three coats of Waterlox Satin varnish.

I've cut the side panels to dimension and now I'm cutting the bevels on the tablesaw. Since the saw I'm using tilts to the right I had to move the fence to the left of the blade (the fence is hidden behind the panel right now.) Once the bevels are cut I'll clean up the saw marks with a handplane.

The side sections are dry fit and won't get glued up until the panels are finished.

The center section is being glued up here.

Now that the tenons are cut and fit on the front rails I can go ahead and shape the curves. Here I've cut just outside a pencil line made with the MDF template on the top.

Now I'm using a flush cut router bit to run off of the MDF template to cut the apron to the exact size.

And the mill marks are removes with a spokeshave.

Half of the case is dry fit here. I've done this to double check the measurements of the doors before the door joinery is cut and fit.

The bottom rails on the sides have an arc cut out of them. I forgot to cut this before gluing the rails to one of the posts, so I cut them afterwords using a template and a flush cut router bit. I couldn't cut right to the edge, so some hand work using a gouge and rasp was necessary.

The case rails and center dividers are being glued up first. I'm using my bench tail vise for this.

The door rails all have their tenons cut. The haunches will be sawed and chiseled out by hand.

The joinery has all been fit and now I'm gluing them up!

Here's a quick sketch of how the glass will be attached to the doors. The retaining strip will have a bevel cut so the screws will pull the strip against the glass, eliminating any rattle.

To cut the bevel I've made an angled channel in a scrap piece of wood. The whole assembly will then get sent through the planer.

Here's the retaining strip all cut and finished. The jig used to cut the bevel will also be used when drilling the holes for the screws.

Here are the doors and the case rails & dividers all glued up.

To cut the rabbets to receive the glass panes I first used a rabbeting router bit, bearing against the bottom 3/16" lip shown here.

Next the top lip is removed with a flush cutting bit.

Finally the corners are chiseled square.

The glass is in! Tempered 1/8" thick panes are used.

The process here is to install each pane with the retaining strips screwed in place, plane and sand the strips flush (as seen here), remove the strips, label them and put them aside for finishing.