Locomotive Display Shelf Project - Part 1

Display Case Construction - Design and Acquisition

As if I do not have enough open projects, I have decided to build a display case to mount on a wall of the man cave for my growing locomotive fleet.  It just is not satisfying to have a fleet of locomotives in boxes, I want to see them!

Some thought went into the design.  I decided that I wanted the shelves to be two-tiered.  I used some half-inch thick pieces of wood to experiment with spacing.  The final verdict: each back shelf would sit 1 1/2 inch above the front shelf.  These shelves would be three inches wide and the main shelves would be six inches wide.​

There will then be three-and-a-half inches between the top of each recessed three-inch shelf and the bottom of the next six-inch shelf.

To Home Depot I went to purchase lumber.  I got two 4'x8' sheets of half-inch thick Birch plywood.  I had them rip them into pieces of the following dimensions:

1 piece - 48"x49" - this will be the back of the case
11 pieces - 48"x6" - these are the outer frame and the 6" shelf inserts
8 pieces - 48"x3" - these are the recessed shelves

This was the same type of wood I had purchased for the decking of my railroad.  Previously I had no issues with this wood warping.  Therefore I was surprised to see all of the pieces cut from one of the sheets of plywood warp considerably within a couple of days of purchase.

A bit dismayed I searched for some solutions on-line, most of which involved wetting the wood and placing significant weight on it while it dried. These methods really did not interest me.

I purchased various metal clamps and four sturdy 3' x 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" pieces of Poplar.

Three of the pieces of Poplar I kept hole to clamp each shelf to during installation to keep them straight. The fourth piece of poplar I cut up into various lengths to used as spacers between the shelves.

As expected, the cuts from Home Depot created some rough edges that would need to be sanded.  A three-pack of fine grit sanding pads from the paint department did the trick!

The 48"x49" dimension of the back piece was chosen so that all of the remaining pieces could be made from 48" strips of wood.  By making the display case 49" wide, the outer vertical pieces, 1/2 inch wide, would leave 48" in-between that all of the shelves would fit into.

lWith enough clamps and the Poplar braces the warped strips of wood were easy to corner and connect.  First I test fit and clamped the wood pieces together.  Once clamped properly, I traced the outline of the shelf onto the back piece.  After removing the clamped piece I would drill pilot holes in the outline on the back board to guide screw installation.

Then I applied a healthy bead of wood glue to the outlined area and re-installed the shelf, clamping it securely in place.  Once satisfied with the position of the piece being added, I drilled into each shelf using the pilot holes as guides and then screwed them in place.

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More to come...

​Chris