Thread: Just checking whether these are good prices for stringybark...

Good Morning pflood

My wife is a retired academic = lots of books - and I have covered five walls with bookshelves.

The first shelves were 19mm and they sagged a little, then I got some 32mm timber at the right price and made some more shelves - they looked much better and did not sag. Sagging is a progressive thing - a bit this year, a bit more next year and so on. Now all my shelves are 32 mm - over 600 linear feet or about 200 m!

There are several types of stringybark - I have used messmate - eucalyptus obliqua - but I do not know if others will perform substantially differently. Most of my shelves are now celery top pine - almost unobtainable now.

In my experience, 19mm shelves over 900mm long will sag, but 32mm shelves will stay strait up to at least 1450mm.

You can eliminate or reduce sag by:

• adding a backing sheet (eg 3mm MDF) and attaching all shelves on 150 or 200 mm centres,
• put an aluminium T-extrusion into a slot just behind the face edge,
• adding a facing strip - more labour and materials, and
• using thicker wood.

I like to have air-flow behind my bookshelves and much prefer the thicker timber, functionally and aesthetically. If you use sliding dovetails then no nails, screws or glue are needed and you can dismantle the shelves if you move.



Fair Winds

Graeme


Dovetail - Sliding.jpgBookshelves.jpg

Great post Graeme!

Impressive. I hope you got brownie points for building those.

thanks Graeme, great job on the shelves. I'm leaning towards the 32mm. What do you think of the prices I mentioned?
Thanks
Paul

I always seem to make bookshelves in a hurry, swearing that we'll never move again. So it's a run to the local timber yard and use what they have. My quick fix for sagging is to drill straight down the shelves (before they're assembled and to insert thick dowel or even broom handles if that's all I can find and then pin with smaller dowels when assembled.P1011931.jpg I much prefer Graeme's solution especially for academic books, weighty in fact as well as content.

Originally Posted by pflood

thanks Graeme, great job on the shelves. I'm leaning towards the 32mm. What do you think of the prices I mentioned?
Thanks
Paul

Thanks Paul

I am not up to speed with Melbourne timber prices, so cannot be definitive.

But the 140x32 equates to about $4.30 per superfoot which I would have thought was an attractive price for select, dressed messmate. Expect to pay a width premium of about 20% for the 280's so also seems about right.

Before you make your shelves, measure your books - height and depth. Paperbacks are much smaller than you think, ring binders are surprisingly large, not many coffee table books. We have shelves ranging in depth - 150, 200, 250, 300 - and the actual vertical clearance between shelves varies also - 225, 250 (most common), 320, 375.



Fair Winds

Graeme

Thanks everyone for the kind words. Yes, Cava, still trying to milk the kudos...

Just noticed the left hand photo, above, has small dovetails. This would have been one of the earlier ones originally with 19 mm shelves - later I replaced those shelves with 32 mm but omitted to widen the sliding dovetail.

Jimbur, we also used to move a lot which was my motivation for using sliding dovetails. There are no nails, screws or glue in the shelves and they can be fully dismantled to move.




Fair Winds

Graeme

Thanks again Gramme, we have an eclectic mix of books, odds and ends so I'd like the depth to be around 280-300. The plan is for the bottom-most level to be 420-450 deep and serve as a long desk. I will likely go with the 140x32 and butt join the pieces. Unsure on whether these will need dowels, biscuit or even tongue and groove jointing. Thoughts? (i realise we are well off the original topic now but I may aswell make the most of the expertise here!)

Are the prices you mention for furniture grade or is reclaimed timber?
cheers
Joel

Looks dear as poison to me. The only advantage unless you want the reclaimed look is that it's seasoned. Somewhere on the right hand side of the page there's usually a link to Narangba Timbers... go look at their F27 KD hardwood prices to se what I mean. Your local sawmiller, or any decent hardware store will carry this stuff. All you have to do is resaw and dress standard dimension stock back to the sizes you want. You can always drive a few nails in and then pull them, flog it with a length of chain, or hit it with a sandblaster if you want it to look rough.

Reclaimed timber in standard sizes is a rort.

Interesting, thanks John. I have a somewhat limited workshop here (it's a shed) and no thickness planer. Will check out the link though, cheers!

Joel, I'm assuming it's reclaimed as it's being sold in various lengths. The boards themselves are fairly uniform in width and depth

Originally Posted by pflood

Thanks again Gramme, we have an eclectic mix of books, odds and ends so I'd like the depth to be around 280-300. The plan is for the bottom-most level to be 420-450 deep and serve as a long desk. I will likely go with the 140x32 and butt join the pieces. Unsure on whether these will need dowels, biscuit or even tongue and groove jointing. Thoughts? (i realise we are well off the original topic now but I may aswell make the most of the expertise here!)

Good Morning Paul

Butt joins are more than adequate.

I ran out of 300 mm celery top about twenty years ago and for a single shelf made do with 2 x 150 mm. Just slid both pieces into a single sliding dovetail - must get around to gluing them together - perhaps in 20 years time.



Fair Winds

Graeme

thanks again Graeme, will update once I hear back from sawmills if anyone is interested.