Just a little update since my vacation started today and will hopefully get real progress done.
The top and middle shelves are currently slated to be 5' long a piece with the base being 7' long. So I'm cutting down 8' long 1x3s in to 30" sections and building them up in to 4 layers each. For a few reasons...
4 of them stacked is 3" which is both the width of my electric hand planer and the maximum height my table saw can cut. So it will give me a couple of options for planing them.
Also because when I tested different lengths it was much more difficult laying out 4+ of them at the full 5', 6' or 8' lengths, getting them clamped, etc... Believe the final build will have 20 layers which would make it 15" deep... may need another layer now that I'm typing that.
The ends are staggered and I have them labeled A > A, B > B, etc so that when I go to join them end to end it should mate up well. Have been jointing them on the table saw, just crosscutting like 1/32nd or 1/16th off the ends.
I'm still convinced this is the most roundabout and annoyingly complicated way to achieve this, but it is fun and I'm learning stuff!
In the mean time waiting for glue to dry I decided to redo my kitchen drawer silverware organizer with some red oak hobby boards laying around. Was putting a coat of lacquer on it.