The wedges must scare people. I find
it unbelievable that the best shelf system out there, to my mind, is
still not, as of this date, available even at IKEA. The wedges
satisfy me: nothing like tapping in the wedge, the last step of
mounting the shelf, and seeing the shelf align rigidly 90ยบ
to the vertical standard. Hungarian shelves are dynamic and
interesting with elements of simple machines: wedges, fulcrums,
levers. It's almost as if Hungarian shelves are busy working right
in front of you supporting their loads.
These
twin Hungarian shelf units were designed to fill the voids on either
side of a large fireplace and chimney as well as provide both library
space for books and display space for artifacts, sculpture and
artwork. Though the eye wants desperately to make these shelves appear
symmetrical they are not, every shelf width and vertical spacing
actually different. The lowest shelf is 12” wide, stepping down
1/2” per shelf until the top one is 10 1/2”. The height between
shelves also decreases 1” per shelf. Compare to the pillars, not really parallel, at the Parthenon. All the shelves are solid red
oak, one of the 12” shelves actually a single piece of wood, quite
a rare find at a lumberyard these days.
The
joint that joins the shelf to the upright standard is technically
called a cross lap joint. Because the notches or slots in each
standard must be exactly in line I cut all the notches simultaneously
by clamping them together, then clamping a guide at right angles to
the set and running a router with a straight bit through all the
standards. Typically I do the same thing to the shelves by standing
them all together on their long front edge and routing notches on the
back side. Alternatively, I've clamped the shelves together, placed
them back side down on a table saw sled and pushed them
through a dado blade. In this case, however, their large size and
varying widths made this difficult. Thus I opted to cut the shelf
notches with a tenon saw and chisel, thus proving two things: that
Hungarian shelves can be made with just hand tools and that retired
guys have more time on their hands.
I
should add that SketchUp helped give birth to these twins, my first
foray into using this 3-D CAD program for furniture design (dimensions removed for clarity):
I
want to thank my fellow Columbia alumnus David Heim, a SketchUp for
woodworking expert, for his generous advice and even a little
personal YouTube tutorial critique of my design. I used his extremely well-written and helpful book SketchUp Success for Woodworkers every step of the way.
I
also want to thank Tony Fuhrman of Summit Woodworking in Tucson for
use of his shop facilities, as well as thank my favorite mechanical
engineer Kyle Colavito for first introducing me to Hungarian shelves many years ago. Find pics of my other Hungarian shelves by searching this blog or on the very first page of Google images.
Thank you so much to these and all my other patrons...
and, of course, Happy Thanksgiving!!
Thank you so much to these and all my other patrons...
and, of course, Happy Thanksgiving!!
