Are you one of those who reads a few pages of a book then throw it on the floor before falling asleep? Are you one of those who stumble on the pile of books and magazines on the floor and hit your nose against the bed posts? That's me! So, I needed a simple bookshelf, mounted high enough for me to be able to put books on it. Ikea used to make a wall mounted shelf in the Billy series. They do not have it any more. Come to think of it, Billy was not wide enough to hold books. So, I decided to make one myself. The interesting part is that when you watch Norm Abrams or Bob Villa doing complicated projects, they make it too easy. However, for you and I, who have a day job doing something else, measuring 5/16th of an inch requires thinking. I guess, what I am saying is that you perhaps can relate to me more because I make ton of mistakes while doing these projects, and that's the fun part. I am sure if you look at the finished product, you will agree that I could not have used those shelf brackets from local Home Depot and mounted a few shelves for less that $20. They brackets simply are too ugly and the shelves do not have book ends. Okay, so now that you are convinced that you need a few of these bookshelves for you, let us move on to the next step.
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Signing UpStep 1: The design
I was thinking to build two units, approximately 3' wide and partially stacked on top of each other as shown in the illustration. The individual bookshelves came out to be pretty much as I had originally thought, however, my stacking idea did not work for me because I ran out of wall.
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How much more difficult or costly would it be to make this shelf in clear heavy plastic instead of wood? drdick@dr.com
if you want a feeling of extra security you could cut your end pieces so that the grain runs diagonally (from the top back to the front bottom corner, not from the top front to the back bottom.) make them the same size as the divider (will require a larger board to cut them from, or let the leading corner be cut off, won't hurt the strength, just a different look) and screw them from below and behind as you did with the divider. this way will both give you stronger glue joints than gluing onto end grain and somewhat hide the screw heads on the back and bottom. this is probably the strongest connection you can make without some sort of proper joinery involving fancy cutting.
however, if you are really attached to metal reinforcement, you could counter sink the brackets with a chisel or router (too fiddly) or put the brackets on the outside so they go behind and under (lumpy but the book are safe) or get the kind that are flat L shapes (much stronger than the kind you are using now, not that it is needed) and hide them between the end caps and the shelf/back, screwing through them as you put the end pieces on (still a bit lumpy if you don't want to cut notches for them, but it might be possible to hide the gaps with caulk or wood putty before painting.)