floating shelves dining room
so i've had this slab of walnut layingaround the shop for a while now and i finally decided to make it into afloating shelf but it has a few challenges this straight chainsaw cutfrom where our branches are removed and the end is fairly rotten but it doeshave a few nice cracks i'm going to feature with some hand inlaid ebonybowties so of course the slab has a little bit of a twist to it and it'sjust a little bit too wide to go across my jointer so i jigged up and flattenedit out with my router sled once i got it flat i sent it through theplaner a few times to flatten out the other side and then i flipped it over toplane off any marks leftover from the
router once i got a flat i started topower carve off the chain saw cut to get an organic shape i tried tothink of it as water running off the edge eroding away the slab like it isa stone my carving method worked outpretty well to get a cool shape then it came back later and refined it with asander for the end with all the rotten wood idecided just to use a wire brush to remove any loose materials and then iwould seal it up with finish when i got to that point for the bowtie inlays idrew out a few different sizes on a piece of paper and once i decided whichones i liked i glued the paper to the
ebony and cut them out on the bandsaw i used a chisel to clean off any sawmarks left behind by the bandsaw and then put a bevel on the back to helpkeep the fit tight when i inlay it i put some double stick tape on the back ofthe bow ties to help hold them in place while i traced around them with therazor blade then after that it was just time to sit back relax with a few sharpchisels and start chopping out the mortises for the bow ties i came in from both corners of thebowtie so i wouldn't over cut into the surrounding wood with the razor blade
once i got all the inlay is done it wastime to cut it to size i decided to cut it on an angle to make the end withthe rotted wood a focal point this way i kind of look like the shelf was beingpushed out of the side of the wall where it was or the wood was just kind ofrotting into the wall or at least trying to make some kind of artistic statementwith the wood so now the last thing left to do isapply a finish and install it but of course the wall is not squared since theshelf is going into a stairwell and i'll be working off a ladder i decided itwould be a lot easier to scribe the shape of the wall onto a plywoodtemplate than to try to hold a big heavy
slab up off a ladder so i started outusing a compass to transfer the shape of the wall to the plywood then use a beltsander to sand to my pencil line did a test fit then transfer the template tothe walnut and then back to the belt sander to sand it to fit to the shape ofthe wall then i checked it for square and use myblock plane to adjust it where needed now the hardware i'm using needs to beinstalled pretty accurately so i taped some craft paper to the wall to mark outthe stud locations then used the paper to transfer those locations to the slab then i used a block of wood as a guideto be sure i was drilling straight into
the slab i wanted to be sure it wouldhang level then i chiseled out a space for the mounting hardware then i created a story stick to help melocate the mounting hardware and the exact spots they need to be on the wall the final thing i did before hanging ashelf was to put a few countersunk screws along the bottom edge. this willgive me some lateral adjustment to level the shelfif the shelf is tipping down i can back the screws out a bit to push the shelflevel to locate the mounting hardware on the wall i tacked up my story stickusing just a few brad's
so it would be easy to pull down withminimal holes to fill in the wall now for the moment of truth to see if itall fits