Finishing Shelves

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You can sharpen your woodworking skills with helpful tips and techniques from the editors of Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines. Get a FREE tip sent to your email address each week! Go to WoodworkingTips.com and sign up today.

Here’s last week’s tip from Woodsmith online editor Ted Raife:

Finishing shelves can be a time-consuming chore. After applying finish to one side, you often have a long wait before the finish is dry and the shelf can be turned to work on the other side. When each side needs several coats of finish, the whole process can really drag on.

Impatience finally spurred me to figure out a way to streamline the job. If I could safely stand the shelves on edge, both sides could be finished at the same time. Support feet attached to the back edge of the shelf to keep it upright were the answer.

As you can see in the drawing, the feet are simply thin strips of wood that are screwed to the back edge of the shelf — one at each end. When the job is done, I simply remove the feet and no one is the wiser. Except maybe me, I’ve cut the finishing time in half.

Good Woodworking,

Ted Raife
Online Editor, Woodsmith

© August Home Publishing Company
2200 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50312

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2 Responses to “Finishing Shelves”

Robert Foster said,

How come you are not putting new podcasts on? I love to watch them.
Thanks
Bob

Joel Hess said,

Robert,

We’ve had to back off on the frequency of podcasts for a couple of reasons. But, they will continue to be posted about once a month for the near future.

Joel Hess
Associate Editor
August Home Publishing Co.
WoodworkingOnline.com