Woodworking project: will this work?

I’ve been told to fit out some alcoves with multiple ‘floating’ oak shelves and a desk-top.

there are various bracket options out there, mostly seem aimed at ‘proper’ floating shelves, rather than ones where you have a wall on both sides as well.

If I have a 30mm thick oak cut to the right size, can i fix 10 or 15mm square battens and then use a router and template to cut a similar sized groove in the edge of the oak? Or is there some pitfall with this that I’m too dumb to see?

I assume you will fix the batton to the wall and then slide the oak shelf on with the batons sliding neatly into the grooves.

Will everything align perfectly along the full length of the shelf?

Will you secure the shelf to the batons with something other than friction?

Glue – how will you every remove it?

Screws – are they going to show from above or below as you might be sat below at the desk or above when standing?

Other than that, it seems feasible

Yeah, battens to wall with screws, probably some small screws to secure it from underneath or above, depending on height. Was hoping not to have to use glue.

Alignment is going to take some care.

Just wondered how much material I needed to leave in terms of batten thickness vs oak thickness.

The rebate for the battens wouldn’t need to run the whole length, such that the shelf front is all oak.

And so if you just care about the shelf sliding off then do the same at the back – no need to screw the shelf down then.

Also you could make the rebate wider than the batten (to accommodate walls that are not parallel). But yes – seems like the rebate in the oak is going to reduce its strength vs just having thinner battens. Proper woodworker would know what sort of ratio would be best…

Depends what you plan to store on the shelves for how much meat to leave but unless it’s for your extensive collection of lead weights, then I’d be fairly happy with say a 20mm batten. I would site the batten off centre towards the bottom face to give you more meat on top.

The question of width comes into it. If it’s quite a wide alcove then you may need to consider things differently.

Having a batten at the back routed in will help support things. With that thickness of Oak, it’s the weight of the shelf you need to consider along with what’s going on it.

If it’s not obvious, do a stopped groove in the shelf so you don’t see the batten from the front.

There isn’t inherently anything wrong with how you plan to do it but, you are perhaps unlikely to get a nice, super-tight fit. Reason being that there isn’t an alcove in existence that’s square!

If your alcove is wider at the front than the back for example, you’ll get a gap as you push it in.

There are simple ways of templating the exact shape, but if you have the scenario above, then you physically won’t be able to slide it in.

If you’re going for a more chunky, rustic look then perhaps a gap here and there won’t bother you.

Cheers. Could be that 40mm oak would be the minimum thickness for this sort of nonsense. That would give me over 10mm each side after the router work.

EDIT: Cheers Kayak, that makes perfect sense. The alcove is not too bad, but definitely not 100 percent square.

I’ve done as you describe and tbh it was a bit of a ball ache. I’m supposedly a professional! Can’t remember what thickness but probably ex 32 or 38  mm so less than 34 finished.

Another option is to use a lipped shelf, probably an 18mm veneered board with a 40mm solid lipping on the front. This way you can hide a baton behind the lipping. Clearly it will be seen beneath, but if you paint it or make it from Oak it shouldn’t be too obvious. Or if you can’t live with that you can pin some 6mm board on the underside. Obviously making sure you lipping is deep enough to cover board plus baton plus under board plus a couple of mill.

Well, my woodworking teacher wasn’t too positive about my skills back in ’82, so this should be a breeze… :)

I am not sure if it would be approved by proper crafts folk but when I once did a shelf into and alcove and had a wobbly wall I carefully used filler. The filler was sawdust from the shelf and glue.

I carefully put some wide cheap plastic tape along the wall exactly where the top of the shelf would be. I then put a strip of decorators immediately above that. I mixed the filler and pushed in into the gap between the shelf and the wall. The stuff behind the shelf stuck to either the wooden shelf or the plastic tape. Some smudged up the wall but was only on the decorators tape. When the filler set I carefully sanded and trimmed the filler and removed the decorators tape to leave a nice clean line flush with the wall, well the plastic tape which you couldn’t see.

When we later removed the shelf, the plastic tape had lost its stickiness with the wall and cam down still stuck to the filler.

Oooh, does that count as a ‘life hack’, I have always wanted to do a life hack?

I put some shelves (18mm ply, waxed and with the front laminations made into a feature) in an alcove as described and just used some small (~20mm) angle brackets that I then painted the same dark green as the wall – I did consider fitting the brackets ‘upside down’ so the part attached to the wall was sandwiched between the wall and the shelf, but the screw-heads were too large. Now the shelves are filled with books etc you can’t notice the brackets at all. The biggest ballache was the non-parallel sides of the alcove.

A carpenter/cabinet-maker would shudder at it, but it’s perfectly fine for us.

I’d upload a pic if I knew how to…

I make and fit all sorts of shelves. One of the smartest supports I made was a set of 4 shiny Nylock nuts screwed in with standard woodscrews and wall plugs. This depends on the shelf being cut accurately though, less than 2mm gap all round.
The Nylock but facing outwards gives it quite a decorative look. Perfect for glass shelves too.

One solution would be to effectively  pair your shelves as rectangular boxes – your get two shelves fixed and level for each pair of battens in the wall that way

You can then have a meatier batten on each side and have some wriggle room in your rebates – slot them onto the battens, fine tune the position and fix through the box sides –  easier to get your alignment right as its a devil to get accurate fixings into masonry – less risk of the end grain splitting under load too.

The problem with really thin strips to fit to , if you;’re going into masonry – is hitting a void or soft mortar when you drill. If you use a boarder piece of timber you’ve got more potions you can try to find a strong fix.

Its not to obvious from the photo (but then its not supposed to be – the alcove isnt very even or square, so my boxes are undersized but about 5mm each side leaving a little shadow gap and appear to float. The boxes protect forward of the alcove a bit and seem to float it in slightly and what your eye reads is straight and parallel lines of the shelves and not the slightly crooked space they are in.

Or use something like 15 x 15 aluminium L section, makes the matching out the shelf ends more complex but lets you use a thinner shelf

our kitchen is fitted like that, except with a rabbet, rather than a dado (is that right?), so the slot isnt a slot, its visible from the bottom, the shelf is shaped like a really really flat T.

The main thing with gaps is not so much to not have them, but to make them look intentional.

Make your gaps consistent, and they tend to look intentional.

I quite like Chickenman’s idea with the aluminium L-section.

You could cut a nice thin groove in the timber edge to accept the profile and perhaps paint the colour of the wall so it disappears a bit.

Make the gap a decent size but consistent all round.

I’ve done that with the profile the other way up to keep the rebate low on the shelf, also housed in the thickness of the profile above the rebate so profile is invisible

Nice. You’d have to have pretty square alcoves for that I guess.

I usually just put the battens under the shelf and recessed from the front edge. Yeah, it’s not invisible or floating, but it’s done in a fraction of the time and once you ram it full of books and other crap, you can’t see the battens anyway.

@Kayak, yeah I once had the alcove getting wider at the back, paint finish so cut square and caulked I’m afraid.

I usually just put the battens under the shelf and recessed from the front edge. Yeah, it’s not invisible or floating, but it’s done in a fraction of the time and once you ram it full of books and other crap, you can’t see the battens anyway.

That’s what I did last time. Looked OK, but thought I’d try something different this time. If it all goes pear-shaped I’ll revert to that method, I guess.

I’ll post pictures of me looking disgruntled next to a bunch of broken wood in a few months’ time.