Make a Shaker Style Pine Shelf - Functional and Decorative!

I could have got away with making a the more simple joint on the corner of this bracket but I think this will give you some experience with the tools and working with wood. I could have used a half lap or even a butt joint, but a dovetail joint is one that's very versatile and it's also one of the joints that is decorative, if you notice on the ends of quality furniture the drawers have dovetail joints, and these are multiple dovetails. and they're particularly striking when they're made of a different colored woods like the from hardwood and the sides softwood.

The brace is a key part to the shelf brackets, because it's this piece of wood that transfers some of the weight back to the wall. Of course there’s not much weight on the shelf, but if you made a much bigger shelf and larger brackets that would accommodate much heavier weights like books and pottery then the brace is a vital part.

The joints at the ends of the brace are called scarf joints. These are fairly simple but they do need for you to concentrate on the marking, this marking of the brace joints will be done directly from the setting out. Without the brace this bracket would be practically useless because the dovetail joints at the corner would not be strong enough to accommodate even the weight of just a shelf with nothing on it. In a later lecture I will demonstrate the versatility of these brackets and you can almost assemble it without any screws on nails. You notice at the beginning I match each of the three bracket parts with matching letters and numbers, but also try to get into the habit of putting marks on each of the matching joints, because although the joints are similar they won't fit the same if they're not paired up.

This lecture I've titled Cleaning up. This is a term we use in joinery, and it doesn't involve washing or anything like that, but it refers to primarily removing all the pencil marks, and because we've been handling the timber some of the surfaces will be a little dirty, it also means removing the Aris from the corners of all the parts, and the Aris as it's called, is the harsh corners of your wood and this is removed with abrasive paper and a block and just rubbing it a few times and you can also rub the abrasive paper over all the surfaces, because don't forget when this is finished with the varnish or a lacquer any marks that's on will show, of course if we remove our pencil marks then the references while we made the joints need to be transferred, onto parts of the brackets that won't be seen for example on the back of the piece that's against the wall, and on the top piece where the shelf will sit, and you can even make marks of matching joints inside the actual joints themselves.

In this lecture you'll see me make two chamfers on each of the brackets. Now this is purely cosmetic but I think it makes a big difference when you look at the bracket. I will later put a chamfer along the edge of the actual shelf itself. If ever you do put a chamfer on timber don't be tempted to use the marking gauge.

A marking gauge is of course primarily used for putting parallel lines along timber for example if you're putting a groove in or you intend to saw to that line but for a chamfer it's simply doesn't work because once you try and you get down to the grooves and once you've completed the chamfer you are left with two grooves that look terrible and you won't be able to get rid of them unless you take a substantial amount more timber off in other words make the chamfer bigger. The other part of this video demonstrates once again the principle of the triangle. If you've seen any of my other courses like when I made the two gates I again refer to the triangle principle for strength.

The quiz is just put in to just see how your progressing.

We now turn to the shelf itself and start to do some work to finalise the finish. I've decided to put another chamfer along both the ends and along the front, it's easy to do, you would need a plane to do this. If you're adept with using power tools you may even have a router, you can do this with a hand plough plane also and if so you could put an ovlo moulding, for example, along the ends and along the edge of the front. The chamfer is still nice as it's in keeping with the brackets and what I've titled the shelf with a Shaker Style finish. If you are using a clear lacquer use the abrasive paper in the direction of the grain, of course if you're painting it you can run the abrasive paper any direction. The very last thing is to just run abrasive paper lightly along the corners just to get rid of sharp edges to look and feel better.