Bookshelves?

[Memory's Flame]

I am trying to set up a permenant altar in my house! It needs to be high enough that my cats and dog cannot reach it, and we don't have a lot of space... so this morning the idea of hanging shelves popped into my head!


My husband has a lot of wood left over from when he made our dog house, and I have a ton of nails for hanging pictures...and some paint in bright fun colors!

My problem? How does one make a shelf?

If I were using it as an altar, would I make several shelves? or just one? How wide?

Oh; and I might add my only saw is either a hand-held/non electric one and a jigsaw...

[zehava]

i did a google :)

http://www.askthebuilder.com/337_Dandy_Bookshelf_in_2_Hours.shtml

http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/woodworking/cabinets/bookshelf1/assembly.htm

if you're looking for a wall shelf, i'd think just some brackets (you could make those out of the wood too) with the shelf resting on them would work.

-z

[Memory's Flame]

Thank you for those links!!! *YaY*

I'm hoping to go work on these this afternoon

[Yasmine Galenorn]

If I were using it as an altar, would I make several shelves? or just one? How wide?

Oh; and I might add my only saw is either a hand-held/non electric one and a jigsaw...

I think how wide and how many depends on what you want to put on it--my main altar (I have three permanent altars--my main one for the Gods, my Ancestor altar, and my Bast altar) is actually a huge credenza I bought from Office Depot and put together. It's full, the whole thing.

Yasmine :colorful:

[Rubber_Piggy]

another wood-working rant from the Rubber Piggy :)

There are two options. Building them onto the wall or against the wall.

Against the wall is you typical bookshelf, not attached to anything, and open box with shelves in it on it's side (you could attach this to the wall if you want), but it's more complicater to build.

The other is a shelf attached to the wall with a bracket. The shelve is just a board of the desired width and length and a thickness sufficient to hold the load placed on it. You get brackets from any hardware store and you need a drill to mount them. If you talk to someone at the hardware store they will be able to tell you which brackets you need.

Use the jig-saw. It's quicket and it's easy to make them cut in a straight line if you use a fence. What's a fence?? The simplest fence is a straight edge (straight bit of wood say) which is longer than the wood you are cutting. You temporariliy (say with some clamps) attach it to you wood so that if you run the edge of the saw along it the blade will run along your cutting line. Attach it to the side of the line that your keeping (ie. don't attach it to the bit your cutting off). You can then clean of the cut with some sand paper wrapped around a sanding block (say a flat bit of wood).

Hope this helps, let me kno if something does not make sense.