Bigger workshop required!

I have recently had a few commissions that have pushed the limits of my workshop space. I was asked to make a version of Christophe Delcourts amazing Legend bookcase for some friends, who wanted a piece of functional furniture that was just like the original, but without such deep shelves and in a lighter wood.

After much head scratching and endless re-sharpening of tools I have finally finished the work. The shelves are made in maple which is super hard and heavy - hence the constant re-sharpening to try and keep the tools working! I'm pretty happy with the end result - not perfect, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

One of the biggest challenges was getting everything to be crooked - to be true to Delcourt's original, none of the shelves are horizontal, and none of the uprights are vertical. A lot of the component parts are slightly tapered - the eagle -eyed might notice that that timber is thicker at the bottom of the piece than at the top. None of this is easily achievable with machinery (as this is normally set up to produce things square and parallel), but can only be done quickly and efficiently with hand tools.

Another big challenge was that the brief asked for the shelves to all be joined together with traditional joinery rather than screws, bolts and modern ironmongery. The shelves required some very tricky joint making, and a very precise order of assembly in order to get everything together properly. Gluing up was a pretty intense experience, but I got there in the end!