Pair Of Bookshelves

[Chestnut]

With in the next couple weeks I will be starting the construction of a pair of matching bookshelves for our bedroom. Currently I have far to many books and it's been requested to accommodate shelves for the books to organize them properly.

I'm going to throw some rough rendered images and I'm looking for design feed back and critique specifically with the shelves and the sides. As you can see the sides are not solid but instead will be slats that roughly follows the A&C style that I'm fond of. My concern is making the shelves. If i do this design you will see the end grain of each shelf so i will either have to edge band every shelf somehow or I'll have to make the shelves solid and deal with wood movement. So shelves are edge banding vs wood movement.

Also concerning the sides is the slats. I currently have the side split with more space on the top than the bottom. I also have a design where it's split evenly top to bottom. The other thought in my mind is to have a smaller separation for each shelf, not modeled because it's tedious to draw. I have a trick to make it not so tedious to build so it's a consideration. Glue up would be tricky even using epoxy.

The back will be open I plan to use the backers for the shelves as well as the top and bottoms to brace for racking. I personally like backless shelves and beings that I'm making them i can get what i want. On the top back due to their size and that they will be standing on carpet i'll be including a space to make a cleat or something similar to attach them to the walls to prevent over tipping.

So I'm looking for suggestions or considerations especially with the topics discussed above but also when anything i haven't considered.

[wdwerker]

Ply shelves, edgeband the sides, solid wood front & back edges . No wood movement issues. Once it's filled with books the shelf surface is mostly covered.  Shorter slats will be straighter and the center crosspiece will stiffen the whole case. 

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, wdwerker said:

Ply shelves, edgeband the sides, solid wood front & back edges . No wood movement issues. Once it's filled with books the shelf surface is mostly covered.  Shorter slats will be straighter and the center crosspiece will stiffen the whole case. 

Ply would increase the cost by 25% maybe more. So I'm leaning solid right now. This it's going to have to be mostly pre finished.

Not really concerned about rigidity but maybe i should be? Was more thinking about aesthetic. I've made a shelf with less bracing that was rigid enough.

[wdwerker]

I guess if you have plenty of solid wood it wouldn't be a big deal. Movement will only be front to back . Are you going to screw, pin etc the strips to the shelves ? Glue will help a little but endgrain should have some sort of fasteners I would think. A cleat under the shelves could be screwed from the inside and slotted holes for screws up into the shelf would allow for movement. Thicker strips could have dado's the shelves. 

A  segmented shelf with gaps would eliminate gluing them up.

[Chestnut]

13 hours ago, wdwerker said:

I guess if you have plenty of solid wood it wouldn't be a big deal. Movement will only be front to back . Are you going to screw, pin etc the strips to the shelves ? Glue will help a little but endgrain should have some sort of fasteners I would think. A cleat under the shelves could be screwed from the inside and slotted holes for screws up into the shelf would allow for movement. Thicker strips could have dado's the shelves. 

A  segmented shelf with gaps would eliminate gluing them up.

There will be 2 glued M&T (domino) joints in the back and 1 unglued in the front to float essentially. Running sagulator if i was able to fill the entire space I'd have 140 lbs of books and the sag would be 0.02" with solid wood and ply would be slightly more and mdf would be double the solid sag.

The cleat is an interesting idea I could also use a pin or something on the front and do M&T to attach it to the back cross support i have designed for each shelf. That would make construction a lot easier.

[Mark J]

Would you consider going with fewer slats on the sides?  I am no aficianado of Arts and Crafts, but the aesthetic here seems different than I saw on your coffee table.  I was thinking to leave off the first and fifth slats and retain the three in the center.

[Chestnut]

2 hours ago, Mark J said:

Would you consider going with fewer slats on the sides?  I am no aficianado of Arts and Crafts, but the aesthetic here seems different than I saw on your coffee table.  I was thinking to leave off the first and fifth slats and retain the three in the center.

This is a different room. I was concerned with less slats being too see through and running the look honestly. The below renderings show a variety of different looks. I split the side into 3 parts as well not sure if i like this look or not.

So i have 2 side designs 1 and 2 and 5 slat designs A - E. I should mention that the side 2 will be more like the first image able where the horizontal piece will correspond with a shelf a bit lower down.

 

[Mark J]

I like the 3 slats better, but hey, you're not making it for me.

[Isaac]

I think I like the 3 slats, and with the dual horizontal subdivisions that line up with the shelves, vs the single horizontal that falls between two shelves. My two cents. 

Will this be open backed? If I so, I would certainly be paying attention to the rigidity since it is quite tall and narrow, you don't want it to fold when loaded up with books, which can be quite heavy. 

[Chestnut]

7 minutes ago, Isaac said:

vs the single horizontal that falls between two shelves. My two cents. 

As state above if i did the single horizontal i'd have it aligned with the shelf below. This is shown in the first image of the thread.

 

7 minutes ago, Isaac said:

Will this be open backed? If I so, I would certainly be paying attention to the rigidity since it is quite tall and narrow, you don't want it to fold when loaded up with books, which can be quite heavy. 

Yes open backed. I'm not really concerned about racking stability there is a 6" wide piece at the bottom that will be M&T as well as a 2" at the back of each shelf. For side buckling, it is unlikely to be an issues again wit the supports on each shelf as well as the limited sag from the shelves.  I could also take the middle shelf and glue the M&T at the front and leave the back to float to bring some bowing resistance to the front of the case as well but i don't really think that is necessary.

[wdwerker]

I think the "B" example looks best. I also like the slats being in 3 sections appearance too.

[pkinneb]

3 hours ago, wdwerker said:

I think the "B" example looks best. I also like the slats being in 3 sections appearance too.

I agree B is the one I would go with too

[wdwerker]

Have you considered thicker slats and sliding dovetails ?

[Chestnut]

20 minutes ago, wdwerker said:

Have you considered thicker slats and sliding dovetails ?

No but i'm not sure that i would like the look of the sliding dovetail that would be visible through the slat. If I were to go that route i'd just do frame and panel case sides. Thicker slats isn't a terrible idea so they are flush with the inside edge of the sides ... i could use the drum sander to flatten any inconsistencies or well even a hand plane. I'll think on that one.

I have also been kicking around putting a 1" wide  brace under the front of each shelf so the shelf rests on that. Maybe I'll model that tomorrow in CAD work has been slow finally.

[Chestnut]

Here is the unit with added supports under the front of the shelves. I kind of like this and might go this route. Have the shelves attached at the back and resting on this at the front.

I also changed the alignment of the horizontal braces on the sides so they correlated style wise across the project. This is slightly harder to see in the image than it is on my end.

Also according to my calculations each unit is going to be 40 BF or around 150 lbs .... guess I'll need help moving these guys around the shop. Might make the shelves removeable.

[Chestnut]

Getting started on this. First step to a successful project: Cleaning the shop.

I have a lot of plans for shop upgrades when i get time to do them but for now everything has it's place and boy is the organization nice for getting clean in a hurry.

 

[Chestnut]

Been slowly working on this. It's my favorite time of the year so every nice day i have an excuse to go outside i take it.

I made an interesting mistake starting out. I had it in my mind that there were 4 small slats per section and 1 large one. So i started cutting and cutting and cutting and it felt like a lot but i needed to have 48 1" wide slats. When i went to lay out i used my measurements and realized i didn't have space for 2 slats on either side. WTF look at the plans and instant facepalm. (－‸ლ) I cut twice as many slats as i needed. All good though i have them planed down to a perfect 8mm domino thickness So I'll chop them up and use them for floating tenons. It's junky red oak any way and i'm @)$&@ sick of red oak NEVER AGAIN.

So i adapted a bit of a different method for slats this time. I did a wide and narrow plunge with the domino and instead of using a chisel to set a small shoulder I set my marking gauge and scored the shoulder and cut everthing at the table saw.

To get the lengths perfect i have layout lines on the stile pieces. I laid the slats down and marked where the shoulder line.

I then measured back the 1/2" for the tenon and marked the length. To the miter saw to cut to length table saw for tenon and bam!.

Sounds easier than in practice it took me a good 3 hours to get this side laid out and to this point. Also the red oak i'm using is a nightmare. Tons of internal stress as soon as i ripped the 2-1/2" stiles the bowed a good 3-4" over their length. I wasn't about to throw away 40 BF of lumber so i'm just going to pull it all together with clamps and when it's glued up the square joints and square faces should work out ok. The inside faces that i cut the joinery into were jointed square and strait on my jointer before i ripped to width so if i pull everything all back it will sit square. I know this isn't up to some of your standards but i'm not goign to throw out all this wood when i know i can make it work.

[Spanky]

Looks like most of the red oak lumber QS. Should be good lumber.

Do you know what kind of kiln they are drying lumber in. They may be running to high temp on the kiln.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Spanky said:

Looks like most of the red oak lumber QS. Should be good lumber.

Do you know what kind of kiln they are drying lumber in. They may be running to high temp on the kiln.

Nope i bought the wood 2-3 years ago and transported it 600 miles. It's been indoors the whole time. One of the boards had enough internal stress to snap a good 2" before i finished the cut that gave me a good surprise. I did all the rip cuts on the band saw thank god.

[Spanky]

Chestnut, some logs just have stress in them. One will have stress and the next three want have any. You can see the stress in sawing the log into lumber. Some are bad.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Spanky said:

Chestnut, some logs just have stress in them. One will have stress and the next three want have any. You can see the stress in sawing the log into lumber. Some are bad.

Yeah i figured as much but it was odd that it was across so many boards that were all stored the same makes me wonder if there isn't more to it.

[wdwerker]

Prevailing wind over a pasture could build up stress in a tree.

[Bmac]

Or a tree that was leaning.

[Chestnut]

So have you ever made a mistake and fixed it to come back a day later and realize that you made a mistake on a different piece and fixed the wrong mistake that wasn't actually a mistake?

Yeah that happened to me. Luckily i had a bunch of material that was the perfect thickness to fix the now 3 mistakes and it was very easy and mostly gets covered up.

I put a mortise in the wrong spot, so i measured the other piece and was like duh it needed to be at 26-3/4". So i grabbed my chisel and brass mallet and made the fix. It was pretty easy made a knife line chopped the mortise square hit the plug with some ca glue done 5 min tops.

Come out the next day to realize that i fixed the right piece and now i need to undo my previous fix and fix both of the other mortises that are in the wrong spot.

Moving on i got all the fixes done. Because I'm using epoxy to glue this entire thing up i per-stained the surfaces that are likely to get touched with epoxy and will be difficult to sand after it's assembled. After the stain dried i assembled with epoxy and everything went smoothly.

After i got them glued together i did the finish prep on the sides because it's going to be way easier to do this apart then together. Also i might be doing more pre-stain and epoxy assembly just due to the number of parts.

[wdwerker]

The patches are almost invisible. I really like the slat pattern you decided on.