You'd be surprised at just how strong it is. You may wish to re-enforce the joins with screws or nails if you intend to keep heavy items on your shelf, but for me, just wood glue was enough. I used good quality wood glue and a ratchet style clamp to squeeze it together. The next step was to glue the three lengths together to form the outer triangle. This will be true for all the cuts in this design, so take a little time to make sure your work piece will be cut in the correct direction. If you see a parallelogram instead of a trapezium, you're going to have a bad time. A view from the edge of the plank should look like a trapezium, like in the example photo above (but much longer as this photo is just a short off-cut). IMPORTANT: When making the cuts, make sure the work piece is the correct way around! The two mitres should mirror each other. I used a band saw set at 30° to make the required cuts. In my design this length was 600 mm but had I put some more thought into this and made it slightly smaller, I could have made the entire unit from only one plank and halved the cost! I began by measuring and cutting three equal lengths to make the outer triangle. Even though I bought them from the expensive DIY shop (If you're in the UK, you'll know the one I mean) they still came to less than £10. I started with two planks of pine measuring 2400 mm in length, 94 mm in width and 19 mm in thickness. (NB: Some equipment show the cut as 30° - this is because the default cut is already 90° so by adding 30° you get 120°, leaving 60° remaining from a 180° starting piece) Just make sure you select a method you're comfortable with and that you can make the 60° cut required. There are a number of ways to achieve this including powered methods such as band saws, table saws, chop saws, sanding wheels, and probably more, but manual methods such as mitre blocks work just as well. Secondly, how will you mitre? The design of this unit relies heavily on the use of 60° mitre cuts. This wasn't a big problem to fix but it highlighted that it is not always so straight forward. For example, in my design I assumed that the three pieces that make the central triangle would be all the same length, only to find that one of them needed to be shorter. The reason for this, is that it's not always obvious what lengths certain pieces need to be. However, if you intend to change the design to something of your own, then I recommend taking the time to draw it out, or even better, make a paper cut-out. Firstly, the design, if you intend to replicate the design shown here then that part is already taken care of. ![]() It turns out their construction is more more challenging than I first thought, but with a little prior planning and forethought, the challenge is easily overcome.īefore you start, there are a few things to consider. ![]() So when I saw a number of these types of shelves appearing around the web, having a go at making one was a no-brainer. I really enjoy all things geometric in nature, but I also like things that are functional.
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