Built a custom bookshelf with dado joints and the whole thing racked sideways

Spent 3 days on a maple bookshelf for a client in Austin. Laid out all my dados with a router and jig, glued it up, and when I stood it up the whole frame was a parallelogram. Learned I forgot to account for the slight wobble in my workbench surface. Anyone else have a project that looked perfect flat but fell apart vertically?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela_dixon25d ago

You said 'when I stood it up the whole frame was a parallelogram' and that sounds rough. But I gotta say, racking usually isn't from a wobble in the workbench. It's more about the dados being slightly off in square or the shelf boards not being cut exactly the same length. A wobbly bench might mess up your glue up, but it wouldn't make the whole thing shift sideways unless your joints were already loose. Check if your router jig was square to the board when you cut the dados. That little wobble you noticed might be a red herring.

val22325d ago

Blamed my wobbly bench for a crooked shelf once. Turned out I just can't cut a straight line to save my life.