whole wall bookshelf

[Col]

Hi,

Just started planning a floor to ceiling whole wall bookshelf (3.57m wide 2.27m high and approx 30cm deep).

Needs to be oak finish and will be stained medium oak.

Looking through previous shelf discussions on the forum, favoured solution would be 18/19mm oak veneered ply for the shelves. So, to keep span reasonable, would propose making four identical bookcase units each less than 900mm wide. The whole bookcase would be face framed in solid oak (hiding all the edges and scribed to walls and ceiling), all sitting on a (level) plinth taking the bottom shelf above the skirting (140mm).

For the sides of each unit, can I reduce the costs and use 18/19mm veneered mdf (or even 25mm mdf which is less than half the price of the ply)?

I have not used veneered mdf or ply before - are there any problems routing dados for the shelves - is there a risk of splintering the veneer along the sides of the cut?

The units would be backed with 4mm or 6mm oak veneered mdf to complete the 'solid' oak look.

Comments, suggestions, hints welcomed please?

Thanks, Colin

 

[profchris]

I'm looking at some of the 3,000+ (could be twice that) books which infest my house.

I think books look lost in 30 cm shelves. To me around 20 cm (book depth plus an inch at the front) is more pleasing.

90 cm might be a fraction wide, leading to sag. My shelves are around 75 cm.

I'd use a single upright between sets of shelves rather than making separate units which will give you double thickness of upright between each bay.

But these are all aesthetic decisions (except the sag), build what you'd like to live with.

Veneer tends to splinter on me, but scribing through it with a scalpel before cutting fixes that.

 

[custard]

18mm ply is touch bendy for serious bookshelves because half the thickness is actually cross grain (okay it still serves as a torsion box separator, but it's not as rigid as solid). Use the "Sagulator" to figure out deflections,

http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/

3mm of sag per metre is the absolute max in my book (ho, ho, ho), and I'd prefer half that or even a bit less. I used 25mm MDF shelves for this build, but with really wide hardwood lippings front and back to withstand the loads, I based the calculations on the sagulator and it worked out exactly as planned,

Good luck!

 

[Col]

I'm looking at some of the 3,000+ (could be twice that) books which infest my house.

I think books look lost in 30 cm shelves. To me around 20 cm (book depth plus an inch at the front) is more pleasing.

90 cm might be a fraction wide, leading to sag. My shelves are around 75 cm.

I'd use a single upright between sets of shelves rather than making separate units which will give you double thickness of upright between each bay.

But these are all aesthetic decisions (except the sag), build what you'd like to live with.

Veneer tends to splinter on me, but scribing through it with a scalpel before cutting fixes that.

Profchris - thanks for the comments. Agree on shelf depth. Looking at an exisiting freestanding bookcase I will go for 23cm shelf depth, with slightly larger on the bottom by making the plinth deeper than the face frame (for the bigger books). Will also revisit shelf thickness - more on that later.

To avoid splintering veneer, would you trust using plain mdf for the verticals and glueing on 6mm veneered mdf between the shelves (i.e forming the dado between two pieces of glued mdf)?

Colin

 

[AJB Temple]

Be careful with shelf depth. Whilst I agree with prof Chris, I too am a book obsessive and a lot of art, cookery etc books are big enough to require a 30cm shelf depth. I built a whole wall bookcase a bit larger than yours and the central section has 30cm deep shelves. All of the shelves are made of 18mm oak veneered ply - but mainly because that is what I had to hand. My maximum span is the central section and is 90cm. If I were building it again (which i will be as we are remodelling current house) I would go 25mm as Custard suggests but I would prefer not to use MDF. Books are heavy!

 

[AJB Temple]

PS, you will not have a problem with break out when you route dados as long as you use a good quality sharp cutter and as suggested above, scribe first to be on the safe side.

 

[Adam9453]

With a nice sharp cutter I didn't have any issues with splintering with oak veneered MDF.
I would do as custard suggests and put a decent size solid oak edging on the front and back.
Alternatively you could route a groove in the underside of the shelfs and glue in metal angle which will give your shelfs significantly better strength to resist the sagging.
I think I would be inclined to put a thick solid back in so you can put a dado across the back panels to provide support across the full width at the back (you could omit the solid oak edging on the back then).
I would strongly recommend weighing the amount of books you plan to put on a shelf and using the sagulator to calculate whats required.
If you're in any doubt then just make up a test shelf, load it up and measure the deflection (sag), then you can apply measures to strengthen it until it the deflection is reduced to an acceptable level.
Be interesting to see the pictures once you're finished.

 

[RobinBHM]

I personally think shelving units divided up into narrower sections are more attractive and are easier to use since part filled shelves dont end up with books tipping over.

Breakfronted designs work well for different depths books options.

 

[Col]

18mm ply is touch bendy for serious bookshelves because half the thickness is actually cross grain (okay it still serves as a torsion box separator, but it's not as rigid as solid). Use the "Sagulator" to figure out deflections,

thanks Custard -
Great looking bookcase - like the idea of a central feature - maybe just slightly deeper shelving (don't want cupboards - need all the book space possible!). I think I would like a single central unit (as oppose to double) so I would make the the units wider so I only had three and then had a shelf span close to 1.2m. A little bit concerned that 1.2m might look too wide?
Played with the sagulator and 26mm MDF and costs of lipping front and back.
For a little extra cost (in the scheme of things) I could use solid staved oak work top (27mm thick) for the shelving - sagulator doesn't have a category for this but i assume it wouldn't be much worse than solid?

I would actually prefer to work with solid (albeit laminated) oak and I would be much more likely to make use of any offcuts in future projects.

Colin

 

[Col]

Be careful with shelf depth. Whilst I agree with prof Chris, I too am a book obsessive and a lot of art, cookery etc books are big enough to require a 30cm shelf depth. I built a whole wall bookcase a bit larger than yours and the central section has 30cm deep shelves. All of the shelves are made of 18mm oak veneered ply - but mainly because that is what I had to hand. My maximum span is the central section and is 90cm. If I were building it again (which i will be as we are remodelling current house) I would go 25mm as Custard suggests but I would prefer not to use MDF. Books are heavy!

thanks - I now have an updated design - see reply to Custard. Basically, 3 units, central unit a feature and deeper than the side units. Using 27mm solid oak(staved) worktop for the shelves over a 1.2m span.
Do you think that would work? ... Colin

 

[Col]

I personally think shelving units divided up into narrower sections are more attractive and are easier to use since part filled shelves dont end up with books tipping over.

Breakfronted designs work well for different depths books options.

Robin - I sort of agree - hence the concern with my updated design having only 3 sections across the span. What would be your ideal suggested width for each section?

Colin

 

[Adam9453]

I'd say break it up into 600mm spans and that will relieve a lot of stress in the design, plus look more balanced in my opinion.

 

[mooed]

I personally think shelving units divided up into narrower sections are more attractive and are easier to use since part filled shelves dont end up with books tipping over.

But with part filled shelves you then get to make some book ends, or have some spare space to keep tools

 

[Col]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback - have now decided on the overall design and materials

It's going to be a 5 bay bookcase, each bay having 7 shelves, with 2 bays on each side having 23cm deep shelves and the central bay with 30 cm deep shelves. Each bay is about 70cm wide keeping spans reasonably small.

Given the bookcase is to have an oak finish and solid oak trim, I looked at veneer for the carcass but decided I would prefer to work in solid wood. I would also say i'm less than careful at times and any knocks etc would be hard to disguise in a thin veneer - solid wood is so much more forgiving (especially since I will be matching older oak furniture in the room and a few knocks are just extra character!

So having chosen solid oak, started looking at the cost and decided there's got to be a cheaper way.

Went to the local reclamation yard and rummaged through their pile of solid oak, laminated oak, ... flooring and picked out a couple of pieces to experiment with. Denailed, trimmed, planed and jointed to give the required width they came up really well (followed the post from Ross to finish the oak: which-stain-to-use-on-oak-t21466.html ). The final thickness of the board ended up at 20mm which is plenty for the 700mm span.

This shows the an offcut from the sanded board ready for finishing next to the almost finished board (but close enough to what I'm trying to achieve):

Just been back to the yard and spent over an hour sorting through the oak flooring woodpile (disturbing the odd rat) and have found enough boards to make everything bar the verticals for the bookshelves for less than the cost of two sheets of 18mm oak veneered birch ply! Just need to source the verticals (which I may have to get new since I want them to be 25-27mm thick).

 

[profchris]

Like your thinking, both on the design and the materials. Those are the kind of shelves I'd want.

Is 27 mm for the uprights structurally necessary, or for the look of the thing? If the latter, could you use the 20mm stuff for uprights and run a wider moulding down the front of each upright? Or would that be too fussy? I make ukuleles, not furniture, so haven't any feel for what works and doesn't.

 

[Col]

Like your thinking, both on the design and the materials. Those are the kind of shelves I'd want.

Is 27 mm for the uprights structurally necessary, or for the look of the thing? If the latter, could you use the 20mm stuff for uprights and run a wider moulding down the front of each upright? Or would that be too fussy? I make ukuleles, not furniture, so haven't any feel for what works and doesn't.

Not having made anything like this before, my thoughts were along the lines that if I was making the units as 5 separate carcasses then 20mm (or even 18mm) would be fine for the uprights - but they would then be doubled up where each unit abutted. I plan to have the shelves at the same levels with (blind) dados across all the units and was concerned that cutting into the vertical from both sides for the shelves would need more 'meat' than just 20mm. So it is a structural concern but I don't have the knowledge to say whether it's necessary.
I am planning for face framing around the edges - but still an open design question whether all the verticals will have a face moulding (they would have done if I had been using veneered mdf/ply for the carcassing).

 

[Col]

Another design change. Having measured up my job lot of old flooring to see what useable lengths, widths I can recover from them gave me a small problem.
There are random lengths (700-2400mm) with widths ranging from 115mm to 185mm. I want to use full length staves for each of the bookshelves, and if every unit was 700mm wide then i end up with lots of offcuts up to 700mm in length (so much so that I possibly wouldn't have enough timber and I don't want to take that risk!).

So I needed an alternative that would better use the random lengths.

Easiest solution I could find is instead of having five units 700mm wide, was to have units of different widths. So, in order, plan to have 500, 900, 700, 800, 600mm . This would keep the 700mm wide deeper unit in the centre.

This gives me significantly better usage of the random lengths - leaving a bit of contingency.

Might look a bit strange with the different widths , or being positive , it would look much more interesting!

 

[MattRoberts]

It might look strange indeed. What about going for a symmetrical 500, 800, 700, 800, 500?

Or 5, 6, 7, 8, 900?

 

[Adam9453]

What about 500,700,900,700,500.
I agree with Matt, it should be symmetrical

 

[Col]

What about 500,700,900,700,500.
I agree with Matt, it should be symmetrical

Matt, Adam,
I will look at symmetrical again. I want the deeper unit in the centre, and did try all widths 600-1000mm in the centre with various (symmetrical) combinations either side and the 'best' use of the lengths I have was with all the shelf units different widths! I'll just have to put up with a bit of wastage.

Thanks

OK - played around again with the combinations and I can settle on 600,800,700,800,600 with a little more wastage and still a bit of contingency for me to work with.