Live Edge Floating Shelves

Have Firewood?  Make a Live Edge Shelf

Live edge shelves.  Floating shelves.  Live edge floating shelves!  Jeez you would think I'm just hunting for SEO keywords with this video!  Actually I'm just trying to be a good uncle and make some shelves for my niece's kitchen.  Can I help it that she is very on trend with her decorative style and she requested live edge floating shelves?  (there's that keyword again)

This is a simple project in that I split some blanks out of a log, planed 3 faces and I was done.  But the live edge required a bit of planning to figure out how to drill the holes in the back for the floating shelf brackets.  Nothing a one time use jig and some pocket screws couldn't accomplish.  The thing I like most about this project is the found wood nature of it.  Picking up a log from the yard or the roadside and turning it into boards to build a project is a whole new experience in woodworking.  This isn't the first time I've done this but seeing as I work in a lumber yard by day, it kind of flies in the face of how I make a large portion of my living.  Still I very much enjoyed working with this Paulownia log as the large pored nature makes it split very easily.  The softness is a joy to plane and chisel and the finished look is lovely and warm.  The live edge is just icing on the cake.

I sources the floating shelf hardware from Rockler.  They have several options and these brackets will support up to 50 lbs which is substantially more than these shelves will ever see.  Still in the process of making these for my niece I decided I need some live edge shelves in my own house somewhere so I'm sure I'll be buying more of these brackets in the future.