Need advice on book shelf construction.
Welcome! / Forums / Project Series / Bookshelves / Need advice on book shelf construction.
Tagged: bookshelf
- This topic has 8 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 1 month ago by Misha.
-
AuthorPosts
-
My mother asked me to make a one row bookshelf. It should measure 270 mm high 250 depth and 1750 long. There should be two sliding glass doors.
I have decided to use 4 boards for the main construction and a piece of plywood for the backing. As the shelfis is rather long, may be it is worth adding one more board to place it in the middle to keep the shelf out of bending.
Are there any suggestions on what joinery should best suit the task?26 February 2015 at 12:35 am #125062Hello Misha. If I understand correctly, you want to build a very wide, but not very tall book shelf. Bending will probably be an issue for the top board if anything is put on top of the book shelf. If you put a middle board in to support the top of the shelf, you could use dado joints. I would probably use a stopped dado so that the dado cannot be seen from the front.
Good luck!
Hello Matt.
Thanks for your suggestion. With the middle board it seems to be clear now. I suppose dovetailed stopped joints would be even better; though I am not sure I will manage to make such a joint.
The top and bottom are going to be grooved with a plow plane to accept the sliding panes.
But I still can’t make sense how to join the corners.26 February 2015 at 9:26 pm #125095Hello Misha,
This is an interesting sounding project.
You have a few options when joining the corners. The classic carcase-work solution would be to dovetail the corners, like the joiner’s toolchest Mr Sellers is building at the moment only turned on its side. If you don’t like that idea you could extend the ends and house the shelves into them. I guess you could even mitre and spline, though it would be tricky to get the mitres really close over that length and I personally wouldn’t trust it to hold much weight.
The shelf is near enough a 6′ span, 3′ is recommended as the limit. Some sort of support in the centre would be ideal, though you should also probably glue the plywood back to the carcase as any sagging is likely to interfere with the sliding doors – especially considering their size. Head over here http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm to check your intentions against reality (thanks to @alien8 for the link).
Just in case you hadn’t considered it, you’ll need two grooves, one for each door, or they won’t slide past each other. I’ve made that mistake before.
Good luck,
Matt
27 February 2015 at 8:51 pm #125145Hello Misha,
I have no idea. I’m sure you could work it out if you knew the average shear strength (parallel to the grain) of your chosen wood and the maximum load on the shelf. Or you could search the internet, someone’s bound to have tested this before. Sadly I don’t have the information you need in my brain.
All the best,
Matt
[attachment file=”IMG_4030.jpg”]
[attachment file=”IMG_4052.jpg”]
[attachment file=”IMG_3234.jpg”]
[attachment file=”IMG_4039.jpg”]
I got the panes for the bookshelf today, and now it is ready. I thank everybody for inspiration and advice.
The middle board is dovetailed as I planned.
The back of the backing has lots of historical notes left by small children, and I decided to leave them as it is.Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files. -
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.