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Hi everybody welcome back,
In this episode I am building a wall #furniture piece and a tv #cabinet. This is made as free floating shelves from thick oak.
This project came about as a request by friends. That is always cool because then you can create something special.
We looked around some furniture ideas online and found a cool consensus about the thick shelves with colored cabinets underneath.
The work started by finding some rough oak. I could source these oak beams. I liked these because grain lines and defects in the wood. This doesn’t make all the steps quicker or easier but the result is quite attractive van rugged.
The thickness came in handy for the shelving design.
I ripped the beams in half with a handsaw. A big bandsaw could have been a bit quicker but I expect more accurate.
I wouln’t have liked to use a bandsaw because the beams were very heavy and unwieldy. So processing them on a stack was practical.
And a big handsaw was perfect for the job.
These smaller pieces were 70x150 and 1.5 m long.
A much more manageable size for jointing and thicknessing. We have a small JET combi jointer and working with such size and lengths were very pleasant.
When one side was flat and 90 degrees I resaw to the width and after that thicknessed to the correct thickness.
At that point I could start sorting the pieces how I wanted to join them to the shelving and surfaces.
The smaller ones were quite simple but the large had quite some parts.
I joined them by creating a groove and an biscuit for indexing. Like a dedicated joiner machine.
I just wanted to try this method and it worked quite well. The setup speed was great actually.
There were big cracks and crevisses in the wood and were it was convenient I used the pva glue on the right spots. Later on I am using epoxy on various other spots.
And then glue up! This was not too difficult but its relevant to check the sizing and gaps before hand.
Usually with worktop glue ups my gap tolerance is 0.5 mm. which is big but most of the projects I do this is fitting because of the industrial design for instance.
Its Important to stage your pieces to a pattern you like and see where differences in height is.
Luckily this is hard oak and I could tap with a steel hammer to adjust the gaps and heights. A straight edge helps lining up and looking along the surface helps straighten.
The large glue up went quite quick. The glue didn’t set up too soon so that is perfect actually. This you son’t always know beforehand.
Then the step was to cut the boards for the floating cabinets. These were simple rectangle boxes.
Joining them with glue and pins and after that dowels with screws.
The visible faces were completely smooth this way.
Oek was put on the edges for strength.
Putty was put over exposed edges, and primer over all.
At a certain point the hinges can be put in place. Measuring or a jig functions fine here.
One cabinet has door folding towards you.
There a gas spring needed to be added to help hold the door.
On the back of the cabinet a cleat was placed to keep it floating on the wall. And board for stiffness and shear strength.
complete close backside was not great because of wall sockets.
Then the bright green paint! The cabinets were quite small so setting up a spray paint machine was not super practical.
Then the oak could be sanded and filled where needed. Again I like the cracks in the wood.
When ready the oak could be shortened to an angle at the endgrain.
At location first the holes get drilled.
I use brass anchors in the brick wall. And then steel rod with threads get put in. With bending the rod I can compensate error drilling and putting in the brass.
The last big step is screwing on the cleat.
And then this was finished. This is quite a large and imposing pieces but it looks very good in my opinion.
It took more time than anticipated but its enjoyable to create something beautiful for friends.
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