I've referred to this shelf off and on here on SMC and so I finally went over to my friend's house to snap some pictures of it since he agreed to buy a couple of pizzas for dinner while I hung chair-rail molding in his baby's room.
The shelf is made up of 3 sheets of laminated 3/4" plywood. The upper and lower sheets are A-1 maple and the middle sheet was some cheaper birch. I used Gorilla Glue throughout.
The curved edged (radius ~5') is banded with maple and the whole thing was finished with a hand-rubbing of Velvit Oil (natural).
The alcove this shelf fits in is horribly out of square and plumb so I had to make a careful template and hand-sand it to match nicely. It came out pretty darn close!
I attached it to the 3 walls of the alcove with plywood runners secured to the studs with #10 3" screws. I am now thinking I should have used some hardwood but oh well. As added support, I cut pocket holes in the bottom of the shelf to secure to the studs in the wall--again, with 3" screws designed for pocket holes.
When I was done sanding and ready to apply the finish, I realized that I spaced cutting a hole/groove into the top for fishing of wires!
After cutting the grooves for the runners and the slot for the wires with my handheld router and fence, I have to say that I thoroughly love my up/down spiral cutting bit. What an amazing finish it provides and it clears chips so nicely. It is an expensive bit to have but it is wonderful to use.
There will be two additional upper shelves as well as a lower cabinet to house the electronics. The upper shelves will only be 2 sheets laminated and I think I can get away with only the bottom sheet being the more expensive maple ply.
I am doing this for a material's charge only as this is my gift to them for their new child.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for this project was how to cut the arc since I don't own a bandsaw and my crappy Craftsman jigsaw would make a horrible mess of the arc. You won't find many straight bits long enough to route out the arc to my template so I had to do the arc cutting in two stages: once template route with 2 sheets laminated and the final arc cut when the third sheet was laminated.
Next, I had to figure out how to used these wonderful edge-banding bits from www.burgessedge.com to work on 2 1/4" of plywood! It was a matter of slowly and carefully plowing out the center of the plywood and then taking apart the matching bit to cut the maple to fit the groove. Glue up to the arc couldn't have been easier. I saved the arc cut-off plywood and used it as a caul to clamp the edge-banding right into place.
Thanks for looking and I'd only be too happy to answer any questions.
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