Art Deco Bookshelf

I made this bookshelf in an Art Deco style to hide my speakers behind the curved sheet metal. I've used a sepele veneer for the shelves and the sides. The challenge was creating the curved corners on the shelves using the small amount of mahogany I had for the edges. I've described making the large radii corners here and on the base I used a smaller diameter corner described here.

I've hidden the smaller speakers in the top right and left corners. In the base of the bookshelf I've hidden the large speaker. In order to prevent the whole assembly from vibrating from the music, I actually cut a hole in the base to allow the speaker to sit on the floor. It sounds good an now I can move my woodworking books out of the garage.

Cutting a Recess In Shelves to Accommodate the Back

I'm building a bookshelf and the back doesn't extend the whole width of the shelf. This is mostly a note-to-self on how to cut a recessed area in the shelves to accommodate the back.

I want to use my router table for a clean cut on the veneered shelves. For the top and bottom shelves, I route a stopped rabbet cut.

For the middle shelf, do the same cut as the top shelf. Then using a straight bit with a bearing, cut the recessed area to the other side of the shelf. Square the corners if needed.

The whole process literally takes minutes.

Smaller Rounded Corners on Veneered Wood

Veneer applied to plywood has some challenges - what do you do about the edge which shows the stacked plys? You can either apply veneer edging or something a little bit thicker. For this project I wanted a 1" radius corner. On a previous post I had discussed how to glue a similar species wood on the edges and route rounded corners using a circle jig. For a radius smaller than the router base, you need a different solution.

Here I have glued strips of real mahogany to the sides of the plywood and want to round the corner. For the veneer, I'm using sapele which looks similar to mahogany, but is much cheaper. To create the small radius corner, I need to use a template and a straight router bit with a bearing.

My second requirement is to use my router table because when I clamp my template to the plywood, the clamps interfere with the router. The circle on the right side was made with a hole cutter used for drilling a house door to accommodate a handle. I then created the template by aligning the circle to the sides of the template workpiece. A ¼" metal dowel pin (shown on the template) secures the circle and allows me to replicate the curve on the template.

With the template created, I need to align its sides to the sides of my workpiece. Another ¼" hole is needed to prevent the template from rotating on the workpiece.  Two metal dowel pins are shown here sticking out. Now I can use the template to guide the router around the corner.

This technique works because the veneer will cover the holes. So now, I simply fill the holes and glue on the veneer.

Art Deco Speaker Enclosures

I am building a bookshelf and want to incorporate into it the speakers that I use for my television. This is the design using Sketchup for enclosing the subwoofer speaker. I need a porous material to allow the sound to radiate so in this project I decided to use metal. This is my first venture into using this material.

My usual construction style is Arts & Crafts. I've decided to depart from that style for this project and try Art Deco using sapele veneer. I'm no expert, but this style uses metal, contrasting pigments, and curved profiles. The curves are especially challenging because I solely use veneer. The previous posts show my construction techniques for the veneered shelves. I have two enclosures that are a mirror of each other. The left enclosure holds the woofer and the right is empty. Since the woofer emits sound from the front and right side, the porous metal needs to be on these sides.

The left side of the enclosure is a slightly curved surface using sepele veneer. It has been bonded to a piece of 1/8" MDF. The curve is created by forcing the MDF into routed curved slots in the top and bottom pieces.

For the porous metal, I've used sheet aluminum that is 1/32" thick. Creases are very noticeable, so cutting it was a concern. I've quite successfully used my tablesaw with an old crosscut blade. I've painted and used a water finish before inserting the metal. The blue tape protects the wood from scratches when I install the metal sheet.

The curve in the metal sheet is formed by bending it around an aerosol paint can. The cutouts in the back accommodate the speaker wires and power connection.

Curving the surface of the sheet creates a fair amount of vertical strength, but the rest of the enclosure is intended for vertical support and the ¼" plywood inserts resist racking in the front-to-back and side-to-side directions.

This enclosure is on a shelf which is the bottom of the bookshelf. A square hole in this shelf will allow the woofer to sit on the floor. I'm hoping this will allow the bass sound to still radiate into the floor and prevent unwanted vibration into the bookshelf.

Rounded Corners on Veneered Wood

Solid Wood or Veneer?

Last month I asked whether this was solid or veneer. It is actually sepele veneer on plywood. Sepele is similar in color and grain to mahogany. I have strips of mahogany on the edges and the challenge was having the curved corner. Finish hasn't been applied yet and my intention is have it appear to be solid mahogany.

I'm going to show the processes to create the curved corner. After gluing the mahogany strips to the edges of the plywood, I cut the two corners off diagonally.

I then glue a piece of mahogany to the corner edges. I need a 4" radius so I made the mahogany strip wide enough to cut to this measurement.

I've inserted a metal dowel pin that my router circle jig used for the center and rounded the corner.

I'm starting to run out of mahogany so here I glue two narrower pieces.

These pieces need to be cut flush to the edges before using the circle jig.

Lastly, I patch the hole from the dowel pin and veneer both sides with the sepele. The mahogany edges are then rounded over on my router table.