walnut shelving with a mid-century modern aesthetic
Project Overview
This project came about as a design challenge for myself. Ive always been a fan of mid-century modern furniture aesthetics, but was never able to find designs that I 100% liked, so I decided to design and make my own. I ultimately settled on a design defined by a 10 degree design feature throughout the shelves. The name 棒棒 (bàng bàng) was given by my wife, bàng bàng being the Chinese word for “awesome.”
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CAD
After all of the rough sawn wood was measured and labeled, Rhino was used to ideate different layouts and designs. It was also used for figuring out precise dimensions and to generate technical drawings and cut lists.
prototype
Before committing to using the walnut, I created a rough prototype out of 3/4” plywood to test the strength of the connection and assess the actual look and feel of the shelf. Some sections were moved and others were made thicker in order to deal with load bearing better. This lead me to revising the CAD model before committing to building the shelves in the final material.
material processing
The walnut I used was rough sawn and needed to be planed and jointed to their final dimensions before use. The walnut slabs were thick enough, that some of the boards were split in half to make the shelves.
legs
The legs of the shelves are what gave it its unique appearance and was the most important part to get right. All features on the legs including the joints and the dados were done with either 90 or 10 degree angles. Special attention was given to ensure the placement of the joints was symmetrical for each shelf, leading to each shelf having two unique set of legs.
final assembly
After all of the pieces were cut and dry fitted together, they were clamped and glued together. The final finish was accomplished through Maker Brands Simple Finish.
playground
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