Wooden Shelf Advice

anotheruser

Yo

We're looking to put up some wooden shelves for out books. The wood will be about 3m long, held by 5 brackets. That's all great but we're looking to have a single piece of wood, rather than get a few bits and put them together as it wouldn't look that great with a break.

Or is there something we can do to join them together with little to no line showing they're two seperate pieces of wood?

andyhop

Most timber merchants will have redwood or basic hardwoods in 3m plus lengths , usually redwood is 4.7m+

love_lifer

depending on width, MDF might be more practical, and straighter. and you'll need 3m lengths to be delivered unless youve a van/lorry.

SailorSam

I used MDF when i put up a couple of shelves. And then to make it look a bit better i added some curved wooden picture rail (the type you have high on a wall towards the ceiling), glued under each shelf. So looking at it instead of a 1" it looks about 3" thick..

Tothepoint.

love_lifer wrote: »

depending on width, MDF might be more practical, and straighter. and you'll need 3m lengths to be delivered unless youve a van/lorry.

Standard mdf will only be 2.4 metres long.

-taff

You could put a couple of lengths together but then you would have to butt them carefully, use wood filler, sand and paint to disguise any joins.

Ainsley1

You can get various bits of wood in 4.8 metre lengths. Many heavier duty (thick) that you will probably need to support the heavy weight of books. Often used in construction CLS (pine etc look) might be ideal but it depends upon the finish you want. Oak too can be obtained in long lengths and other hardwoods too.

Visit you local timber merchant (rather than a DIY store) or have a look online for the type of wood you desire. Quick search for "timber 4.8m " will give you lots of results

FreeBear

Ainsley1 wrote: »

Often used in construction CLS (pine etc look) might be ideal but it depends upon the finish you want.

Visit you local timber merchant (rather than a DIY store)

Searched my local B&Q for a shortish length of ~150mm wide CLS - Rejected virtually every length because it was either twisted, bowed, or heavily cracked/split. When it came to finding some 4m+ lengths of skirting boards, I pitched Travis Perkins off against Jewsons and got a very good price (half of what B&Q would have been).

Well worth going to a proper timber merchant, selecting the length you want and haggling over the price - A good merchant may well be able to plane it to size if you need something of a particular width or thickness.