The Woodshop Shed

1850 bookcase

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


Our historical society owns and maintains a house….........and the claim to fame is that Abe Lincoln spent the evening in the 1860 home….....and his height was measured at 6 foot 4 inches in the doorway. Two people have extensive collections of Lincoln related books they want to donate to the house but we have no bookcases.So, being a woodworker, decided to build and donate 2 bookcases to the house. I wanted them to be period correct, but when I searched the Internet I only found an English 1850 bookcase. I concluded most Americans in 1850 owned just 1 book, the Bible, and therefore did not need a bookcase :)I decided I would use the electric version of sawing and drilling, since they had manual saws and drills. Router was ok because they had hand planes.The only thing I noticed that was different on the 1850 English cabinet was the back panel. Today, we would use plywood, but not available in 1850…......so they used “floating panel” method commonly used in kitchen cabinets to allow for expansion and contraction. I cut off some 1.25” long cut nails to about 5/8” length and put 1 at the top and bottom of each floating panel in the center….......so the panel can still expand and contract.I went with rectangular cut nails versus modern nails. They still sell them, but they are expensive. I usually use steel bent table top fasteners, but since they were not available in 1850, went with wood version. I used a lot of dowelled joints. No nails are visible looking at the outside of the cabinet (they are on the back or under the base)I have always used polyurethane, but since that was not available in 1850, went with pre-mixed Amber shellac from Ace Hardware. Had not trouble with shellac, but man it dried quick, in about 1 hour !!Main cabinet is red oak, and back panel is common pine.You can see all the details at my woodworking web site using this link.This was a fun project…........now onto building unit #2, which should go a lot faster since I know what materials and methods I will use :)

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