We just moved a desk out of the lounge upstairs in to the ex nursery turned junk room to make an office.
Even though loads of stuff has been freecycled and real cr4p taken up to the tip, there is still quite a lot to store in addition to the office requirements so some shelves were needed. Nothing very special but I wanted to make them match the oak desk and it's cupboard unit that I made years ago to match.
Oak veneered board was my material of choice, with support at regular intervals, 18mm mdf does not sag much but the exposed edges need attention.
Real tree wood lipping gives a tidy result and useful resistance to chipping and splintering of the veneer which is only around 0.5mm thick.
I wanted the colour to be a medium oak and I had a supply of stain left over from the cupboard unit.
Although it might seem strange at first I like to do some finishing work at the beginning. The veneered mdf is quite fragile and even sliding boards over the bench can make marks if the surface is not scrupulously clean.
No photos of the process but each face has had two coats of stain and a coat of Ronseal satin varnish brushed out to a thin coat. As well as protecting the surface from all sorts of unwanted marks, any glue squeeze out does not affect the wood. From past experience, some of the constituents of the stain will separate out into any dried glue in this case turning it quite orange. Its a bit like the school experiments in chromatography with filter papers where the colours separate out.
Here is the pile of ready cut shelves - L shaped cutout is to fit round a boxed in flue from the gas fire below.
I make my lipping into a Tee section with a central tongue to fit into centred groove in the shelf edge. I make this with as much precision as I can meaning that it fits perfectly and is self locating making gluing up much easier. Within a batch the veneered mdf is very consistent thickness 19.1mm in my case so making the lipping to fit means absolute minimal finishing and so no risk to the delicate veneer.
I prepare about 50% extra lipping stock normally from trimmings off the edges of board and plane that up to size. I prefer to use square stock as this means when making the tee section, there is no risk of cutting the tee on the wrong face.
I did not have enough oak so I'm using ash which when stained will look fine and only purists like you lot would ever notice
So 19.1mm square ash coming off the thicknesser with the last cut being a fraction of a mm with sharp knives for a perfect finish.
Here is the pile of "more than enough" square stock.
I tend to find that if I don't cut enough, there is bound to be a cock-up and it is so tedious to have to make a second small batch and of course the converse, when you have plenty everything goes well, all the offcuts are still long enough to do shorter runs etc and you have plenty left over ( These left overs tend to get cut into sticks and stakes for SWMBO garden habit).
Next job is to cut the groove in the shelf edge. I find it easier to fine tune the Tee dimension to fit a groove that the other way round.
Just setting up on a piece of scrap first. Three passes with an ordinary blade. One to cut the centre out first.
and then offset the fence a couple of mm and do one pass through to cut one side of the groove and then flip it end for end and run it through AT THE SAME setting and the resultant groove is automatically in the centre. Exact width is not too important but I aim for 1/3 of the board thickness - just over 6mm
Set up a horizontal feather board to deal with any bowing in the boards..
and the boards can be pushed though safely- all you have to do is control the weight of the board at the start of the cut. The feather board keeps the job up against the fence and the already square edge of the board means it stands upright. The outfeed table takes the weight at the end of the cut. Flip end for end and run it back through and the grooves are done.
With a groove dimension to work to, I can set up for cutting the Tee section on the lipping.
Just the two cheek blades from the dado will be sufficient.
Then mount an auxiliary fence to carry a vertical featherboard so the work will be retained both vertically and horizontally and as a bonus will cover the dado blades making it impossible for all but the most determined finger to get anywhere near.
A few trial cut and measure step got the fence in the correct position and the blade height spot on.
Again two passes through, flipping end for end ensures the tongue is central
and a trial fit of a short length into the edge of a shelf
This close up shot shows the degree of precision I was after.
Quite quickly I had all the tee section cut.
The elegance of this method is that the set up is controlling all the dimensions. Once set, it is simply a case of pushing the timber through almost without a care, It just has to come out right and sure enough it did!
Here I have glued up the first two shelves.
Doing them in pairs uses each shelf to distribute the clamping pressure along the whole length.
Whilst the glue is going off, I've used the time to write this up - now off to glue up numbers 3 and 4 before dinner.
Cheers
Bob