We needed a few shelves for our home, and I made the mistake to open up Pinterest…
A couple designs and ideas later – if one can use such a sentence when one talks about Pinterest – and I decided on a shifting wall shelf design by Liminal Studio. Before you bring out the pitchforks and torches, let me point out that I made this shelf based on one image and only for my personal use, which is okay according to Norwegian law. I will NOT make shelves for sale based on this design. That would be both illegal and immoral.
I rummaged about in my stack of wood and found a nice piece of red oak. After cutting the parts roughly to length, I planed the and took them down to dimension. I used the router plane to mark the thickness, then planed to the line.
Marking the thickness with a router plane 
Knifewall, cut, shooting board. Repeat. 
Stock for shelves ready!
I then cut dovetails for the frame joints. My first hand cut dovetails.
Not too shabby as my first one! 
Two down…
This was my first time cutting dovetails by hand, and the first one was catastrophic. I cut it off. The next one was passable. It goes against the wall. The next three were a lot better – almost perfect!
I cut the dadoes for the shelves using Paul Sellers‘ knife wall method: mark with marking knife, use a chisel to create a small groove for the saw. Then I used my dovetail saw and cut down to the line. I pared most of the waste with the chisel, then I used the router plane to clean up the dado and get to exact depth.
A quick dry assembly to check everything. The shelves fitted snugly!
I rounded the ends of the shelves and then glued the dovetails. Once the glue was hardened, I rounded the outer corners of the frame with a rasp and a file. I gave the whole shelf a light sanding before finishing.
Last test fit of the shelves 
Ready for glue! 
Glued and shaped. 
Not bad at all, that dovetail!
I made a small recess for some hanging hardware to invisibly mount the shelf to the wall.
I then applied two coats of oil based laqcuer. Between coats I used a card scraper to remove any raised grain, and gave the whole shelf a light once-over with some sand paper. I mounted the shelf to a plank with two screws so that I could apply finish on all faces except the one facing the wall. I did that one separately.
After the finish had cured for a couple of days, I hung the shelf on the wall where my wife made my work shine by decorating it with her own craft. She does needle felting – please follow her on Instragram. She also made the heart from twigs of larch.
I have a board on Pinterest labeled «wall shelf». Thankfully, we have a big house and lots of wall estate…