I have a space behind a door that normally just houses piles of unread books and unwatched DVDs, so I tidied up and decided to make better use of it. In that, I wanted to build some shelves to store unread books and unwatched DVDs. So I designed this, with an old fashioned pencil.
I didn’t want it to be a boring ladder style thing, so I came up with the above. The S shapes would have been unstable, so I added the diagonal braces for support. Note the height – 111cm.
Here’s the pallet wood I used.
It’s a nice hard wood, under all the crud I think. Possibly Ash, but I can never really tell. I pulled it all apart, leaving lots of dangerous nails.
Which I removed with a special tool called a hammer.
Then I cut everything to length.
Before planing and squaring all the planks.
Looks much nicer, and if it is Ash, that an expensive pile of free wood.
No fancy joinery, just some dowels, but a chance to use my vintage Record dowel jig.
On the board ends. And then on the board tops.
I found a lenth of rusty steel pipe and cut some pieces with my teeth (well, an angle grinder).
Which I then cleaned up with sandpaper and elbow grease (well, a lathe).
Then it was time to slide all the dowel joints together, add glue, slip the tubing into place, and add the cross braces.
You’ll notice I made two errors. The first, I put the back braces on the wrong way, and at 111cm, it is exactly 7 cm too tall to fit the space I measured it for. Oops.
It also looks wonky, but it’s not, it’s all right angles.
Looks a bit better with stuff on it, but it’s functional, and sturdy.
