Built in torsion-box shelves

I wanted to put some shelves in an alcove of a new apartment between metal stud walls. Being new the walls were perfectly square and plumb!!! and tapered almost 10mm, inwards from back to front. This posed the first problem that if I used invisible fixing of some sort they would not slide in from the front.

The solution was to make tapered side cleats, screwed to the wall, leaving a parallel tongue to allow the shelves to slide in. 

First the torsion box shelves themselves. Foolishly I decided to use 6mm oak veneered ply which was a nightmare to keep flat and it would have been much better to use MDF.

I glued the framework which was roughly tongued together onto the first side and clamped it to the bench.

 The cross braces had a sawn tongue each end which located in a groove along the front and back rails to ensure a level.

The full depth front rail was glued to the font of the frame to allow for a radiussed edge later.

 Fitting the other face was much more difficult than I had thought owing to the wild ply and I used every cramp I had and more.

 It were a reet thrutch to get it all together but we made it in the end.

Finally a pair of very strong shelves which had no flex at all.

The front rail overhung the sides which were grooved in preparation for the cleats

The cleats were planed up with a loose tongue screwed and glued in place. The counterbores came perilously close to the edge but I just made it :-)

Test run before installation

A bit of a clean up, radius the front edge and they were ready for fitting