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 

Café Shims - Table Leveling

You are sitting with your lover; it's a lovely sidewalk table on Place du Tertre in Montmartre. The waiter has just brought your wine, red wine, of course. The glasses sparkle in the fading Paris sunlight. You gaze into your lover's eyes and lean forward for a little kiss. Suddenly the force of your elbow finds that one leg suspended off the plane of the other three and voilà: first the seesaw down, then the recoil up. The glass of red wine tips and spills into your lover's lap. The deft lover, however, would have surreptitiously tested the table upon arrival, slipping his (or her!) café shim under the offending leg and avoided such unpleasant surprise.

Everyone has been annoyed by a rocking restaurant table. Still, you probably won't have a cafe shim with you, but if you did, you would certainly impress your companions. Andrew Knowlton wrote in the April 2016 issue of bon appétit, speaking of a Beverly Hills restaurant, “They solved the single biggest annoyance in restaurants: wobbly tables.”

The set of six is made of random hardwoods, hand-sanded and oiled, not hardware shims at all! They are 1 3/4" wide and 3” long, a little smaller than a business card, and taper from 3/16” to near zero.

A novelty perhaps, but shims are useful: leveling furniture and pendulum clocks, securing hammerheads, locking Hungarian shelves, etc. 

Small Set Hungarian Shelves

For all the posts on Hungarian Shelves, including tips on how to build them, type "Hungarian Shelves" into the search this blog window at the top of the blog.

Missing Stile Home Library -- Woodworking Tip #18

Home libraries have certainly populated my woodworking career, and though my design preference for small shelving units is the Hungarian Shelf; when the collection reaches a certain size books just feel better “housed” rather than “shelved,” cozying themselves with walls on five out of six sides. When used on a huge wall there is something disconcerting, upsetting, precipitous about Hungarian Shelves...some number on the Richter Scale being conjured.

For these larger libraries I have often used the “missing stile” approach as above, leaving the stile off one side of each vertical bay. Each subsequent carcass slides behind the stile (vertical) on the one already placed giving the whole library the look of having been built in place. I have used this system successfully even in series of six bays. The resulting junction of the stile and rails is resolved in one of three ways: the rail is either of considerably less thickness, its end is curved, or, in the case above, beveled.

No matter which method, from a design perspective, the library also avoids a kitchen cabinet look wherein rails and stiles are sanded flush. One hint with this method is not to glue the back in its dado, thus allowing ever so little racking, if required, when the carcasses are screwed together.

Hungarian Sideboard with Razor-Thin Lightbox

 

 

 



The "lightbox" consists of 72 ultra-thin LED lights set in strips and placed in a rabbet just beneath the rabbet for the obscure plate glass, thus making the whole assembly only 3/4" thick.  The bottom is not closed since the lights cast nicely both up and down.  The 6 watts of LED lighting are sufficient to illuminate a room.  As far as the mounting goes, I thought why not use the Hungarian Shelves system just for a single shelf, aka sideboard.  The beautiful wine glasses are by George Averbeck, Fire on the Mountain.

 

 



 

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 should look black.

Kitchen "Spacer" Wine Rack

When this kitchen installation required a 3" spacer it seemed a waste of space to place it at the face frame. Always looking for a new tunnel for the wine cellar, it occurred to me that the width was perfect for a bottle of wine though insufficient for a wine rack with sides and shelves.

The idea of supporting wine bottles with just a bored hole was provided by my cooperative shop partner Tony Furhrman (Summit Woodworking).  Thus the spacer was moved back, thickened, set slightly away from the back wall, screwed to the side of the adjacent cabinet and now provides storage for 8 bottles of wine.  The lip of each bottle locks it in place so it can't slip out.  Tony points out that though the bottles slant down from the neck, corks are still fully submerged.  A similar "spacer wine rack" provides storage for 8 more bottles at the base cabinet level.  A little clever rotation of the bottles  allows the labels to be read without removal.  I like the fact the bottles share the same cantilever support mechanics as Hungarian shelves, less the wedges.  Though very secure they are easily inserted or removed.

Yet More Hungarian Shelves

Finally realized upon installing this set of shelves that knocking in the wedges with an oversized block that extends beyond the front edge of the shelf not only allows placement of the wedge perfectly square to the shelf but also prevents marring of the bottom of the shelf with the hammer.

More Hungarian Shelves

Hungarian Shelf Wedge Detail

Hungarian Shelves

For some details on the wedges used for Hungarian shelves click below 

 

Wedges for Hungarian Shelves