Jason’s Bent Lamination Wall Shelf

This is a bent lamination wall shelf made of Ash from a 2005 Popular Woodworking magazine article.

It was pretty easy to build following the directions. I had wanted to build this since I got the magazine way back in 2005 but didn’t have all the stuff I needed. This past year I picked up a Dewalt 735 planer, Grizzly 0490 8″ Jointer, Grizzly G0513X2 Bandsaw and a G0548Z 2HP Dust Collector…so the build was on!

A few things I would do different: 1) When resawing the 3/16″ slats, I would not just randomly slice them from multiple boards at a time and not keep track of the order of the boards so the grain doesn’t match. I was trying to be efficient not walking back and forth from the Bandsaw/Jointer. 2) When gluing the boards against the form, I would need more clamps and would use a negative form to apply even pressure along all the slats. 3) When routing the slots, I would put some tearout protection on the front of the boards as some of them did tearout when cutting the slots for the shelves and had to be repaired.

For the finish I used a random orbit sander to 220 grit before glue-up; Hand Sanding to 320 following assembly; and 3 coats of Minwax wiping varnish followed by application of paste wax with 0000 steel wool.

This was my first project with all my new equipment so I’ve labeled it the $2000+ shelf!