Friday, June 14, 2013

Hungarian Shelves Slot Height Revisited

Two recent sets of Hungarian Shelves ran thick and thin, i.e. in one case I made the slot height taller than my recommendation Slot Height for Hungarian Shelves and in the second case (the set above) shorter.  At first I thought the tighter the fit of the shelf in its slot, the better, but I have changed that thinking for several reasons.  First, wedges that taper to a knife edge are more likely to break upon insertion or removal.  Second, they offer too little wood for compression when driven into the slot.  Third, the thinner wedges lack rigidity and tend to fall away from the bottom of the shelf.  My revision is to make the slot height always a little more than 1/16" rather than less.  I found that even a 1/8" space works but that tends to be a little too much.

The uprights are African mahogany stained to match the accelerated darkened cherry, accomplished by some careful time in the sun.  As always the natural face of cherry is so lovely.  She requires no makeup.

Commercial furniture makers still think that cherry is black.

See also our shop at:  FlyingCircusStudios.etsy.com

3 comments:

LJWolfeMan said...

Kurt:

Nice shelving! I want to put these in my house too.... What size stock are you using for the uprights?? Looks like 2x3 or 2x4?? Do you think I could use doug fir with stain?

and what is the depth of the shelving? 10 inches?

Great work!

Jackson

LJWolfeMan said...

Kurt:

Nice shelving!

What size stock for the uprights? 2x 3 or 2x4? Also what depth is good for the shelving? 8? 10?

Much appreciated.

Jackson

Kurt J. Meyers said...

The standards are 2x2's, true dimension 1.75" x 1.75," and I see no problems using doug fir. The shelves, rightly observed, are 10," a dimension that works fine for most books except really oversize.