what's up I'm Jonathan and what welcome to make tales where I'm sure my maker
journey to help you go further in yours so don't forget subscribe
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I want to share with you how you can create your own a floating shelf one of my
favorite things about this floating shelf design is that it's based off a
French cleat system which means the shelf is removable and it's really easy
to install on other walls jumping straight into materials for this build
I'm going to be using eighteen millimeter hardwood ply along with some
20 millimeter thick finished pine for the cleat the full plans to this build
will be available on the maker tales website link is down in the description
while I measure and cut down I would like to mention one thing when it comes
to material used for cleats I would not recommend using OSB or MDF try and stick
to something a little bit more solid
with everything cut to shape in size it's time to add some guidelines to make
sure we're going into the center of our word while screwing the Shelf together
one of the key things here that you'll see in the design is that we have to
leave enough space on the back of the shelf for the cleat with the lines down
I now add rough marks of where I'm going to be screwing my plan is to slightly
pocket hole these screws as I did for the jewelry bench video
with the pockets done and going to pilot hole all my screws I do this for the top and bottom
and the sides if you're working with plywood and you don't do this for your
sides there is a high risk that splitting the ply while doing this I'll be using
clamps speed squares and 90 degree clamps try and keep everything as square
as possible once I've drilled all the pilot holes I
went ahead and dry mounted the whole shelf together primarily to check the
fitting and to make sure it's square I did struggle a little bit as the plywood
I was using was offcuts from an older project and the ply had developed a
slight bow once all together I gave both the sides and the front face a small
sanding to make them all flush
now that it's all looking good is time to take it all apart I do this to make
our life easier to finish the inside before we do the final assembly
considering I had such a bow in my ply I only took off the top piece to save
myself a little bit of work later on as I'm working with hardwood ply I can come
with quite a few defects so I went ahead and filled in all of these with some
good wood filler before continuing with the inner part of the shelf once the
wood filler was dry I gave it a quick sanding to make it flush to the surface
and then apply some cheap MDF wood sealer from my previous paint video I
find that this was the most time effective method for sealing wood or
paint with the sealer dry it's time to apply a few coats of paint letting each
coat fully dry and then giving it a light sanding with 320 grit sandpaper
between each coat with a total of three coats of paint I had achieved the finish
I was looking for with one last light sanding to get a smooth finish I then
applied three coats of polyacrylic once again letting each coat dry and lightly
sanding with 320 grit sandpaper between each coat with the final coat of polyacrylic
dried instead of sanding it with 320 grit sandpaper I fold the sandpaper
on itself and sand the sandpaper itself so my 320 grit sandpaper turns into a
much higher grit roughly I'm guessing around 600 or thousand grit I do this if
I don't have any higher grit sandpaper so using this sudo high grit sandpaper
I give the last layer of poly acrylic a light sanding to have the inner part of
the Shelf finished at this point we mount the Shelf together again feel free
to use glue this time
once assembled it's time to repeat the finishing process starting with wood filler
sanding the wood filler flush along with the sides in front if they were no
longer flush
a coat of wood sealer
a few coats of paint this time around though I found that after my first coat
of paint I could see that I did not do such a great job on the wood filler so
to fix this instead of sanding the paint away and
redoing the wood filler I used some multi-surface premix filler which worked
a charm once dry I lightly sanded it and finished the painting
lastly adding three coats of polyacrylic like I did on the inside
once we get to this point the majority of the work is done
all that's left is the cleats which I start by giving them a light sanding to
remove the sharp and thin edges
a quick check to see how it fits on the back of the shelf to then roughly add an
adequate amount of countersunk pilot holes for the screws and then securely
screwing the cleat in place lastly let's head over and install our
new creation my plan is to install it right here above Jenny's desk as the
Shelf is going to be so close to the corner of the wall I use a bit of scrap
eighteen millimeter ply to get the correct offset with that done and now
draw some guide lines for the cleat that the Shelf is going to rest on
with the aid of these guides I now place the wall cleat in position which I first
screws straight into the wall with no J plugs I do this to correctly position
the J plugs and using the screw holes I just made
with the J plugs in and flush the wall I secure the wall cleat into place
quick tip don't forget that magic sponges are great for taking pencil
marks off walls very easily
and now it's as simple as just placing our new floating shelf into place and this
and is only the beginning you've just hung a floating shelf using
the French cleat system using that exact same French cleat you can hang a TV or
almost anything go and check that video out in a card or on the links down below
a big thanks to my patrons and if you want to support and enjoy the content
that I'm doing here I would love it if you would consider joining them on
patreon too thanks for watching keep making I let the quest continue