Twin Hungarian Shelves

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 90º 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!!

Find useful wooden objects including wedges for Hungarian shelves at:  FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com