3/4" floating shelf?

[Gary Kittleson]

Howdy...a quick question for those smarter than I (ok, that's most of you....!)

I want to put up a floating shelf. Hoping to use 3/4" maple plywood, with hardwood on the edges (perhaps 3/4" or so).

What I'm envisioning is:


hardwood on 3 sides, with a plywood edge against the wall.
1/2" hardwood cleat attached to the wall
1/2" routed recess in the plywood to accept the cleat
shelf would be 10" deep by 18" long
Very little weight on shelf (holding Wireless Blu-ray player on wall below flat screen TV)


Does this sound feasible? Metal studs in wall, but with such little weight I was actually thinking of drywall anchors.

Your thoughts?

[Shawn Pixley]

Unfortunately I think it will sag to the front even without anything on it. That's a lot of moment at 10" deep and a half inch thick cleat.

[Robert Chapman]

I agree with Shawn - I would want at least a four inch vertical support under a ten inch deep shelf.

[John Lankers]

You could consider this from LV http://www.leevalley.com/en/hardware/page.aspx?cat=3,43648,43649&p=51933

[Jamie Buxton]

Why are you stuck on that design? As you have figured out, you don't get much height for leverage to hold the shelf up. You're going to have something a couple inches tall sitting on top of that shelf. Why not put brackets going upwards at the ends of the shelf? You could make them a couple inches tall, and they'd be the same height as the Blue-ray player. And now you have 2-3" inches of leverage to hold up the front of the shelf. You could use those keyhole plates in the back of the brackets.

[Brian Tymchak]

You might be able get away with this by adding a top cleat as well to trap the shelf in between the cleats. I would NOT recess the cleat(s) into the shelf. That just weakens the shelf by effectively reducing the thickness of the plywood at the mounting point. But if there is very little weight being loaded on the shelf, this is probably not an issue. I'd build a quick test wall to test the loading of the shelf.

[Peter Quinn]

I would face glue two pieces of half inch plywood to make my 1" thick shelf, which will actually be just a bit light of 1", and use the lee valley hardware above made for the purpose. I don't see the 3/4" shelf and. 1/2" cleat getting the job done long term. You could make a hollow shelf with honeycomb core and 1/8" skins which would be rigid enough and itself incredibly light, but what a lot of work for 1/4"!

[Stan Calow]

I used the Lee Valley blind shelf supports that were mentioned. Solid wood shelves, 8" wide, 1 1/4" thick, no sagging.

[Chris Padilla]

I built a shelf like this albeit thicker and smaller in size to go above the stove to hold items like salt/pepper shakers, a timer, and some other spice jars. I think mine was 1.5" thick (two 3/4" MDF with walnut veneer) and I dadoed out the back so that some shelf brackets could fit within the dado. The other end of the L-bracket fit within the body of the shelf (cut ahead of time before sandwiching the two pieces together) to help hold it up yet look floating.

[Greg Cuetara]

Another idea. If you want to go thin on the main support you could have a few wires from each corner back up to a screw in the wall. It would be all but invisible until you get close enough to see it. For all purposes you could use heavy duty fishing line if you wanted it really invisible or it could be a a heavier line and it could be a design feature.

Greg

[Frederick Skelly]

You could consider this from LV http://www.leevalley.com/en/hardware/page.aspx?cat=3,43648,43649&p=51933

Thanks for posting this Johm. I must've missed these when I perused their catalog.
Fred

[Brian Tymchak]

You could consider this from LV http://www.leevalley.com/en/hardware/page.aspx?cat=3,43648,43649&p=51933

I like those. thanks for the tip!

[ian maybury]

3/4in thickness is living dangerously, but not necessarily impossible - but a strong shelf material would be important given the very thin walls left after drilling for the supports. Is a 3/4 in shelf strong enough?

I think you may still be in trouble trying to use the Lee Valley items - they specify a minimum 1in thickness, and 1 1/8in to hide the mounting bracket. The holes in the shelf are apparently 7/16th, so they could be accommodated but it'd leave the mounting brackets visible and the material above and below in 3/4in pretty thin.

Hafele UK do a sizeable collection of invisible supports for shelves down to 3/4in, not sure if they are all available from Hafele US. This 12mm one is though, and there may be more if you search: https://www.hafele.com/us/en/pds/shelf-support-12-mm-press-fit-type/28332014/?MasterSKU=000000000001260900010023#SearchParamete r=&@QueryTerm=invisible+shelf+support&PageNumber=3

Drilling the holes for them may be a bit of a challenge without a very accurate press and a very good quality (long series) drill - it might be easier to rout slots and laminate the two 1/2in boards together. It'd be possible to add a couple of extra supports if two seemed flimsy.

I did that this sort of thing once DIY using studding/threaded rod, but better to get some of the high tensile variety usually available from engineering suppliers. I retained it in the shelf with a smear of silicone, and then epoxied the ends into a hole drilled in the (masonry) wall. It's tough to place and drill holes accurately and squarely in a wall, but the epoxy (mask the wall and the back edge of the shelf to prevent problems from drips) allowed some wiggle room.

If mounting off wooden studs a long lag bolt with the head cut off and screwed in with a vise grips might do a decent job, but the holes for them would need to be drilled accurately square to the wall….

[Steve Peterson]

If mounting off wooden studs a long lag bolt with the head cut off and screwed in with a vise grips might do a decent job, but the holes for them would need to be drilled accurately square to the wall….

I was going to suggest the same thing. Use a drill press to drill an accurate hole through a block of wood. Then use the block of wood as a drill guide to get a straight pilot hole in the wall. Cut the bolt head off after screwing it into the stud. A small screw can be drilled from the bottom of the shelf near the end of the bolt to hold the shelf in place.

Unfortunately, the OP mentioned metal studs so this won't work. Maybe the Lee Valley brackets are the best choice. All of the strength will depend on a good grip from two screws per bracket into the stud. This would be much stronger with an expanding wall anchor into the metal stud. This assumes that you are allowed to drill two side by side holes (about 3/8" each) into a metal stud.

Steve