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Thread: A Quick Stress Panel Approach

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    A Quick Stress Panel Approach

    A friend asked me to build some corner wall shelves for his son's room for him to store/display his small toys. He wanted a simple, clean look with no brackets, just the shelves floating on the walls. That made a stress panel seem like the best approach. I've built stress panels with wooden grids in the past but they take substantial time to construct so to keep the cost down I decide to use foam panels instead. That also allowed me to use 1/4" plywood which is actually less than 3/16" these days and so flimsy it would never look flat only supported on a grid system. I would have had to have used 1/2" plywood with a wooden grid, driving up the cost and weight.

    After cutting the 1-1/2" thick pink foam to size I calibrated the thickness by running them through my drum sander, which works really well with it. The edges of the shelves are made from pieces of poplar with a rabbet cut on both edges to cover the edges of the plywood, and mitered at the corners. I attached the poplar edging to one piece of plywood first using glue and pin nails. when that was dry I assembled the panel like this.



    Gorilla Glue sticks great to insulating foam. I used yellow glue to hold the plywood to the poplar edging. The space at the back of the shelf is where it will fit over a wooden ledger first screwed to the walls. I was going to do the glue up in a vacuum bag but decided it would be easier with some cauls and clamps since I didn't need much force as I'm dealing with foam.



    After painting and installation the shelves look like this:



    I also made a hanging wall desk, but used a more conventional approach for that. The walls were so curved and out of plumb that it took a lot of scribing and work with a belt sander to get the desk to fit well to the walls.

    I got this photo a few hours later. I guess his boy likes them.



    John

  2. #2
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    That's ingenious...would have never thought of that! Great job and they turned out great. You're a very good friend!
    A wannabe woodworker!

  3. #3
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    I really like that construction idea, John. Effectively strong, yet lighter in weight.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  4. #4
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    John, nicely done. I like every aspect of it. Great job, sir.

  5. #5
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    Those shelves and desk came out great John. You used some really good ideas and saved your friend some money too. Thanks for posting.

  6. #6
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    Thanks everyone. My friend is an arborist and I occasionally get logs from him. Building these shelves for just the cost of the materials was a way to "pay" for some of those logs. He texted me a day or so later to tell me his other son wants some for his room, too. The extra piece of foam I bought by mistake just found a purpose.

    John

  7. #7
    Those look great, John. That was a very creative idea to use the foam. How did you attach them to the wall. Did you use those things that look like rods and stick them into the shelves?

    Mike

    [You were lucky the walls were square. Not true in all houses. But maybe you checked that before you built.]
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 03-09-2021 at 7:26 PM.
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  8. #8
    That's clever and the result is delightful!
    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

    “If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”

  9. #9
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    I am surprised at how good they turned out - they are a real space saver - a definite advantage to a boy's room that can easily clutter.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Henderson View Post
    Those look great, John. That was a very creative idea to use the foam. How did you attach them to the wall. Did you use those things that look like rods and stick them into the shelves?

    Mike

    [You were lucky the walls were square. Not true in all houses. But maybe you checked that before you built.]

    Mike, the corner allows for an easy approach. I screwed 1" thick ledgers to the studs on both walls. They were sized to fit snugly in the back of the shelves. Because he might want to take them down some day, I held them in place with a few screws through the top of the shelves. For a permanent installation I would have glued them to the ledgers and shot a few pin nails from the top to hold them while it dried.

    You can carry pretty heavy loads with this same approach with a floating shelf on just one wall if you make the panel thicker. As long as the ledger is securely screwed to the studs the load capacity is related to the square of the shelf thickness and inversely to it's depth.

    The walls were no where close to square or plumb. The house was built in the early 1800's. Some of the construction methods used were bizarre; like a masonary chimney supported by the second floor. It's had several poorly done renovations, one where a main floor beam terminates in space on one end. My friend will never be able to finish all the work that it needs. For my part, I took one of the desk panels over and we scribed it to the wall before I built the rest of it. Those scribe lines looked like a topographic map. I still had to do a bunch of adjustment because I didn't notice that the short wall wasn't close to plumb so when we put the assembled desk up the bottom met the wall before the top. The walls were better up higher but still required fitting. A belt sander is your best friend for scribing work.

    John

  11. #11
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    Jan 2010
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    Lafayette, Indiana
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    These look great. Nice work. I suspect you will be getting some referrals.

  12. #12
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    Mar 2005
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    Cashiers NC
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    Nice work. I am sure he will enjoy having them.
    Charlie Jones

  13. #13
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    Apr 2013
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    Kansas City
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    Brilliant idea to use the foam.

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