Sawdust on the Floor

I have noticed an interesting way to identify a fellow woodworker. He or she will often start to tell you about one of their recent project by saying something like the following. ” I saw this interesting (insert your recent project here) discussed in a recent magazine and I really like it, but I had to modify it to fit into the other furniture in our home”. Then he or she will go into great detail telling you exactly what he or she did to make the project work for them. And we listen with rapt attention.

Well, I saw this great looking wall mounted book shelf in a Woodworking magazine several years ago, and I really liked the design, but I had to modify it to fit into the design of my old office.  This shelving unit is really simple to build and makes use of readily available shelving hardware.

My wall mounted book shelf consists of three vertical pieces, but you can adjust this number depending on the size of the room you are working in. Each of these vertical pieces is 36″ long, but again, this can be lengthened or shortened as your needs require.

Each of the vertical pieces starts with a piece of 4/4 Oak that was dressed first on the jointer and then passed through the surface planer, to produce a piece that is 5″ wide and 33″ long. The vertical edges were rounded over slightly with a 1/4″ round over bit installed in the router. On top of these pieces is another piece of 4/4 Oak, that was dressed in the same manner as the first piece, but this piece was ripped to only be 4″ wide.

This second piece of Oak has a 1 1/8″ wide 3/8″ deep dado centered along the length of wood. I would have loved to have been able to cut this dado on my shaper table, but I am unable to adjust the shaper fence far enough away from the bit when I use stock this wide. So I turned to my tablesaw  instead to make the dado. While I do own a dado blade, I very seldom use it. There are a couple of reasons for this. Setting up the width of the dado is a very tedious process, adding or subtracting cutters or shims until the width is correct and no matter how good your setup is, the bottom of the cut made with a dado blade is never flat.

So my solution was to simply make repeated rip cuts along the length of the stock. I started with making sure that the blade height was correctly set to 3/8″. Then I adjusted the ripfence at 2″ and made a pass of the stock over the blade. To ensure that I was really in the center of the stock, I turned the stock around and made another pass starting at the other end of the stock. Since I was making multiple identical pieces, (3) I ran all of the stock for the additional pieces over the blade, before I made any adjustments to the rip fence.

The next step is to adjust the rip fence to widen the dado. Again, I ran each piece over the blade twice, with each pass starting at the opposite end of the stock. This keeps the dado centered in the stock. I continued to do this until I had a dado that equaled 1 1/8″ wide on all of these vertical pieces. The 1 1/8″ wide dado was dictated by the width of the metal shelving units I used. If you decide to use another style of metal pieces then you may have to adjust the width of your dados.

Once the dados were cut, these second boards were centered vertically on the first pieces and attached with glue and sheet rock screws applied from the under side of the first board. Since I wanted these vertical pieces to sit flush to the wall, I took the time to counter sink each of the sheet rock screws that were used to connect these two pieces together.

At both the top and bottom of these vertical pieces is another piece of the 4/4 oak. These are only 6″ wide and 2 ” deep. These pieces are mounted on edge, and act as a cap to the vertical pieces. These pieces serve no structural purpose, and are strictly decorative. Both pieces are attached with glue and a couple of pin nails from my nail gun.  On the very top of each of these vertical pieces is another piece of trim. that extends another 1/2″ beyond the front, and both ends of the first trim piece. Like the first two pieces, this is really only a decorative addition.

 As of the date of this post, Rockler is offering  a Porter-Cable 16 Gauge Finish Nailer / Pin Nailer Combo . This dual-gun kit includes the 16 gauge FN250C Finish Nailer, the 23 gauge PN100 Pin Nailer, 1000 fasteners (500 2-1/2″ finish nails and 500 1” pin nails) and a convenient carrying case and is currently on sale on line only for under $150.  The normal price of this kit is $260. 

After a complete sanding of the vertical pieces, they all were finished with a coat of oil based stain and then several coats of polyurethane. When this was complete, they were ready to be hung on the wall. I added a metal bracket to each of the vertical shelf standards. These brackets fit into the dados that were cut previously. The front edge of these brackets sit proud of the face of the wooden part of the vertical standards.

In each of these metal brackets there were equally spaced pre drilled holes for conventional mounting. After predrilling each of the vertical standards for these screw holes, I attached the entire package to the wall using 4″ sheet rock screws. Before I attempted to install these long screws, I made sure to use a quality screw lubricant. Remember never use soap as a lubricant, as soap contains lye, that will cause corrosion and leave rust stains on your project as the tannins of the wood react to the lye of the soap. Because I don’t like surprises, like having these shelves falling off the wall, I made sure that each of the pieces were installed into a vertical stud in the wall.

The other vertical standards are installed in the same manner, just be sure that they are all level with each other. The actual shelves are simply pieces of 4/4 Oak that was dresssed by the jointer and surface planer. The ends of each of the shelves were rounded as a decorative feature, and the edges were relieved with a 1/4″ round over bit, top and bottom.

The shelves were finished using the same process as the vertical standards. I found hardware from the same manufacturer of the standards that acts as book ends, when installed into the metal brackets. I added a set to each of the horizontal shelves.

You know, I was just wondering what it would have looked like if instead of using only oak, I had used a different wood fro either the first or second vertical piece? Maybe you can try that when you modify my book shelf  idea to fit in your home.

Related posts:

1. Woodworking Project -Wall Clock Part 1
2. Woodworking Project – Wall Clock Part 2
3. Woodworking Project – Wall Clock Part 3 Cutting Cove Molding on Your Table Saw
4. Woodworking Project – Wall Clock Part 4
5. Woodworking Project – Circuit Breaker Panel Part 2 – Raised Panels