Antique Barrister Bookcase: Salvage and Expansion

I've been woodworking for 25+ years now and almost since the beginning of that time I've thought that Barrister's Bookcases were fascinating. I am referring to the real ones, where it goes together like legos, and you can add and remove shelf modules. Over the years I've seen a number of magazine articles or videos where people replicate them, but they usually "fake" it by buildig a monolithic single unit bookcase.

So one Saturday in early July of last year I was heading out of the house on an errand and two doors down there is a Barrister's Bookcase sitting on the side of the street.

But I had places to go, and it looked small and dirty, and I really do not need another bookcase, and it was probably a fake... So I drove past. When I came home it was still there, but I was busy unloading the car and forgot about it. Later that day it poured rain. Late in the evening we were out again and upon arriving at home I noticed that the bookcase was still there. So after we parked the car I wandered over to confirm that it was a piece of junk and that I was right to ignore it...

And it was an actual modular Barrister's bookcase. Four modules that click together like legos. Almost undoubtedly 100-ish years old. And I'd ignored it and left it in the rain... I promptly grabbed a furniture dolly from the garage and carted it home. Sure it was dirty, water damaged, and I didn't NEED one. But it was an actual authentic Barrister's Bookcase!

The video above is the story of me examining and seeing what needed to be done to fix it up and make it nicer. Would I need to strip it right down to bare wood? I expected to have to cut out and replace some damaged wood. But things definitely changed over the course of my work on it.

Fast forward to this year, and I have now been using this bookcase as a display cabinet. But it is not large enough. I want one two more modules! Currently you can find these pretty readily available on Ebay or FB Marketplace, but lets just say that the prices exceed what I'm willing to pay. So unless I find another one to salvage I figured I should just try making one myself.

The second video tells the story of me figuring out how this factory furniture was built, reverse-engineering things, and building my own modular shelf that would stack with the other modules.

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