This project has given me a lot of long, thin shim-like pieces of wood to use for other things. The alternating colors of the birch in the many strips I’m holding would probably look interesting glued up, and turned in my mini lathe into something like a pen. Note between my fingers in each hand that there are thin slivers of air between the boars. This is the very light snipe encountered at the leading, and trailing edges of the wood going through my planer. There’s simply nothing I can do about it with small boards, as they’re completely in the planer, past any adjusting steps, when they’re cut.
The larger strips in the back – nice, square rips from the longer top and bottom panel glue-ups of this TV stand project – are going to be put to use as stops at the back of the small shelves, and bracing along the undersides of the long shelf, and top panel, to help strengthen it up against tilting over to the side. I don’t think it’s at all necessary, but I’ll feel a little bit better with some nice-looking cross-bracing, even though it won’t look like that’s what it is.
