Popular Post Chestnut Posted January 4 Popular Post Report Share Posted January 4 A friend of mine asked me to make him some floating shelves for a kitchen remodel he's working on. He has his own wood shop and is capable but just didn't have the time. We ran over dimensions and materials. I gave him a guess on cost and got started. The way i am building these is probably harder than it needs to be but I wanted to make the shelves light weight as they'd be floating. I didn't want to show up to install them and have the front edge sagging because the 8' x12" x 2.5" thick shelf weighed 100 lbs. I also wanted to make them out of thin veneer to keep costs down and help with potential wood movement issues. So the main structure of the shelf is 1/2" ply. I'll have a top skin and bottom skin. The shelf will mount to the wall using a shop made floating shelf bracket that will fit into a "mortise" along the entire back of the shelf. Because I only had 1" thick material and wanted to the end shelf thickness to be 2.25-2.5" I added some 1/4" plywood in targeted places. This might make sense later and there is probably an easier way to do this but this is the method I decided. I used my new vacuum back and pump setup to do this as I had to try it out. Once that was setup I needed to make the core of the shelf. For this I used some aromatic cedar. It's been sitting around my shop for a long time and I don't have a planned use for it. I get it through a bulk lumber buy on Craig's list and it was for all intents and purposes free as the money i paid was fair for the lumber and racking I wanted. With my planned design for the wall cleat I needed to wrap the cedar in 1/4" plywood to make the thickness consistent. The cedar and wall cleat material were all milled together to ensure they were the same thickness. This makes the mortise to mount the floating shelf. Again vacuum bag to accomplish this. Pretty sure the design was subconsciously decided on so i could maximize the use of the vacuum bag. With the shelf material made and the core material complete tit was as simple as connected the top and bottom structure with the core material. I cut the core material at 1.25" wide to keep weight down so the center of the self is essentially hollow. To keep all the parts from sliding around i put a few brad nails to hold everything together before sliding into the vacuum bag. Here is a picture of what the layers of the shelf looks like. With the core structure complete the final steps are to wrap everything in shop sawn walnut veneer. I was shooting for 1/8" veneer so when i run an 1/8" round over on all edges the glue lines should be disguised a bit better. With the 4/4 material I had on hand I was able to get 4 slices per board leaving room to sand down to 1/8". This will also allow me to paint with grain a bit. Beings that the "client" is a woodworker himself he'll appreciate the effort i took here. Above is the bookmatched upper and lower faces. The show faces will be 2 pieces to get the total 12" width. The hide faces will be the pieces pictured below. I only had 1 6.5" wide board. I had plenty of 5.5" or 8-10" wide material. I didn't want to waste the wide stuff for this use. So the hidge faces will have a 2.5" leading edge. The edges are to be book matched as well so the front and side faces should match extremely well. There will be a bit of end grain on the one end of the shelf. I'm going to minimize this with the round overs and sanding to high grit to help it blend in. I didn't want to miter and I'm confidant i can make the end result look great. Showing the core layers again with the walnut face. My first run attaching the veneer was a success. I used a lot of painters tape to hold the 3 pieces of veneer together. I also taped around the edge to stop the veneer from shift as i moved the panel into the bag. I created corner blocks so the sharp corners wouldn't puncture the bag. I also put a towel along the top edge as it was jointed and I wasn't sure if it would be too sharp for the bag. The glue up went well after being in the bag for 3 hours the glue set and everything went great. I used TB III for some extra time getting the glue in the bag. The weight of the panel at this point is nice and light. I'd say it weighs 30-35 lbs. Much lighter than the 100lbs if it was solid wood. More details on my over complicated shelf build to come. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chet Posted January 4 Report Share Posted January 4 I did something similar last year building a mantle for my daughter's house, although it was more torsion box In design. The purpose was the same as your's, to keep things light. Your vacuum system would have been nice for the glue ups. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted January 4 Author Report Share Posted January 4 8 minutes ago, Chet said: Your vacuum system would have been nice for the glue ups. I've wanted a system like this for a while. I really like using shop veneer for projects it adds a different design and material use ability that is a lot harder with full thickness wood. I"m sure most are familiar with my shop veneer drawer fronts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom King Posted January 4 Report Share Posted January 4 I can see right now that I'm going to have to have one of those vacuum bagging systems. I'm sure you researched them before ordering, so if it's not too much trouble if you could provide a link it would be Much appreciated. Hope the little one is feeling better. We remember raising children as the most fun we ever had, but situations like illness have faded from memory that is easily recalled. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted January 4 Author Report Share Posted January 4 Both the bag and press were ordered from VacuPress https://www.vacupress.com/product-category/vacupress-pumps/ I got the 300 pump as it's rated to remove enough air from a bag large enough for a 4' x 8' panel fast enough so the glue doesn't set. I also got my bag from them. I went with a vinyl bag as I'll be pretty gentle on it as a hobbyist. https://www.vacupress.com/vacuum-pressing-purchase-bags/ The bag i got was the 54" x 112". It comes with closures for both ends. A side benefit is one end closure can be moved to make the bag bigger or smaller if your pressing needs change. Width is unchangeable. Total cost was $917 after tax and shipping. Shipping was $60. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom King Posted January 4 Report Share Posted January 4 Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coop Posted January 5 Report Share Posted January 5 That’s darn neat nut! I’m glad the vac system worked as you hoped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhighlander Posted January 5 Report Share Posted January 5 Nice work on the shelf panels! I'm looking forward to seeing your bracket solution,that is always a challenge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted January 5 Author Report Share Posted January 5 12 hours ago, wtnhighlander said: Nice work on the shelf panels! I'm looking forward to seeing your bracket solution,that is always a challenge. I'm going to basically use the method they used for the mantel in this episode of TOH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQyZX1sg38 Due to the size and expected weight that will be placed on the shelf I'm going to modify things a tiny bit just to hopefully add some strength. I'm worried about the flex for a long, long grain joint in a kitchen setting. There are 5 shelves in total and 3 of them will be able to be installed the same was as the flanking shelves in that episode. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Chestnut Posted February 9 Author Popular Post Report Share Posted February 9 So it's been a month. I managed to get the shelves completed, finished and installed. January was a busy month for us with Hazel so I'm glad i was able to steal enough time to get this done. I however didn't take enough pictures of one critical aspect of the project so I'll try and use a drawing or 3. Following prepping the surface veneers and gluing them with the vacuum bag, there were quite a few edges that needed to be trimmed. I see posts often about L fences and thought I'd share my own take on it. As I'm more on the simple and get it done side for shop stuff i took a 6/4 off cut jointed 2 faces square and planed the other 2 sides to match. I then drilled 2 holes to accept my table saw fence clamps. It took me longer to find the right drill bit than any other task. I end up using it a lot for flushing operations. With everything trimmed, surface prep was next. I spent some time with the #4 & #3 smoother and got most of the drum sander marks off. I then hit the card scraper on some spots and sanded everything to 180 grit. Finish is my usual wipe on poly. Most of the walnut was prety meh but i made sure the show faces were from some nice stock. The underside of the low shelf and the upper side of the high shelves was mostly sapwood. The final task before delivery is to construct the wall bracket to mount the long shelves to the wall. My main idea was to have a piece of wood that slides into the slit that is created previously. The wood and slot were milled and constructed in a manner to provide a nice tight fit. In thinking about my initial design that is in the TOH video above, i wanted to provide more cross grain to offset some of the forces that may cause the wood to snap. My design below was my idea. I cut two 3/4" x 3/4"with the grain running parallel to the wall. I was initially going to glue in cross grain pieces sticking out. My fear was that the upper runner would split at the screw and not carry much load. To offset this i decided that running a domino through the entire assembly would add considerable strength to the assembly. The dominos are shown below in dark brow. They ended up being walnut so the dark brown is fitting. In the diagram below the first view is looking at the assembly as if its on the wall so the front of it. The 2nd view is the top down view of the assembly. I did remember to take a picture of how the cleat assembly will mount in the back of the shelves. I slid perfectly into the slot that I diligently designed it to fit within. The glue dried on the 2 mount assemblies 2 hours before heading out the door to help install. Installation was pretty easy and went well except for 1 mishap. The client wanted a channel cut for under shelf lighting. When running the slot with a router track setup i goofed on one of my offsets and put a slot in a really bad spot. I'll be making a plug to fill the hole from project off cuts. Hopefully it'll blend in nicely. Installation pictures. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhighlander Posted February 10 Report Share Posted February 10 Those came out quite wrll, Drew. Kudos for getting everything to fit correctly into the existing 'blind' spaces! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted February 10 Author Report Share Posted February 10 12 hours ago, wtnhighlander said: Those came out quite wrll, Drew. Kudos for getting everything to fit correctly into the existing 'blind' spaces! There were some tricks i used to make that work. I should have covered the install. The spaces were measured and i built all of the shelves an inch longer than the space they were getting installed into. This allowed me to scribe them to the angles the walls made which were not even close to 90. and fit them in perfectly. I had less wiggle room on the long shelves for various reasons but i ended up getting the length perfect. On a side note the cabinets he installed were from Ikea and i have to say they are pretty dang nice cabinets for the money he spent. All of the hinges and drawer slides are blum. The finish is super durable, we tested it accidentally. I guess the install was extremely easy as well. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkinneb Posted February 10 Report Share Posted February 10 Very nice!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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