Reinforce Bookcase with Plywood
Summary
In this video, I show how I went about reinforcing a bookcase with a plywood back. The original backing that came with the bookcase was made of cardboard. After a number of moves and relocations, the cardboard begin to tear and the strength of the bookcase diminished.
Video
Transcript (Unedited)
in this video I'm going to show you how I replace the back of a bookcase to make it stronger thanks for checking out the almost engineered channel if you are interested in tech tutorials home-improvement tutorials or automotive tutorials please consider subscribing to the channel so this is a bookcase that I've had for some time now and through years of moving it around from room to room and location in the location over time it has gotten weaker so what I've actually done is had to move it and disassembly partially as you see here I have it on a painting cloth to prevent scratches from getting on in front of it and the reason why is kind of weak is because of the backing of it is made out of cardboard which is not really a strong and sturdy material but it is served the purpose while it was originally set up so what I did was disassemble the part and then basically reassemble the bottom half of the bookshelf and I'm leaving the cardboard in place so that the finish of the back of the bookcase is still the same the other side of the cardboard that's there has to simmer full case finish so I'm taking the measurements and so you want to take the measurements from top to bottom and then left to right next I said of my plug would on some salt horses and then I measured and drew my straight line using a straight edge in this case I am using a level for a straight edge so then using a 2x4 I used it as a rope fence and so just a matter of clamping it down by measuring the width of the saw from the fence and then to confirm I just used a tape measure to make sure the distance between the line and the rope fence material was the same from the starting point to the ending point and then clamped it down and then just cut the piece of plywood now you can use the table saw or a circle assault for this purpose either one will get the job done next I took the cut piece of plywood and placed it on the back of the bookcase and then I proceeded to make sure and align it to each of the corners I did end up having a little bit of overlap over the edges but nothing too major that you can't pay attention to and also the bottom part of the bookcase was slightly out of square so I did realign that accordingly next I proceeded to drill holes through the plywood and the bookcase and this is to make sure that the wood does not split when security screws to the bookcase is given that the edge of the bookcase is very close to the edge of the plywood if you don't pre-drill your holes first you risk splitting the plywood or they would on a bookcase to draw a straight line of where the wood is set in from the edge I used my square and then just a pencil marking from all the way down and just pull the square all the way down the length of the plywood and this will give me a guideline of where the center of the bookcase edge is and I can just follow that line all the way down when I am attaching this screws this ensures that you don't have any kind of blowout on either side of the wood of your bookcase or you drill through the edges then I proceeded to pre-drill the holes all the way down the line on each side and around each of edges these are the holes that I'm drilling is roughly between four and six inches apart the spacing depends on the type of material that you're using this bookcase is actually made out of fiber MDF fiber board or particle board so you know you want to make sure that it is secured and this may be more screws than necessary but it's better to build something that's way stronger than it needs to be then to under build it and have it collapse once I was finished I stood up the bookcase and ensured that it was able to stand up on his own there are some screws that had to be tightened so I went ahead and retighten those and once done you can see here the bookcase is actually standing up on its own now with the reinforced backing which before it was not able to do hopefully this video has given you insight and how to reinforce your bookcase so that you can make it stronger if you have any questions please leave those in the comment section below also please like and comment and subscribe and please follow me on instagram and twitter at almostengr