CD Shelves

My neighbor is a huge music fan, and lately she has been going totally retro, buying a turntable, and bunches of records. Along with this revelation she wanted to dust off her CD collection, and bring it out of the closet and on the wall. They asked me to come up with a design for some shelves for them. After discussing style, location and the size of her collection I came up with this for a design..

pretty standard…brackets, a 1” solid top, and I was trying to figure out something to keep them from falling off the ends..


I sent them these drawings and the render..and they didn’t like it. Too country for them. So, back to the drawing board! I kicked it around with some people at work that are fellow woodworkers and I also took a look at most of the other furnishings in the house. I came up wit this version..modern simple..a floating wedge, suspended on hidden french cleats..

I sent them the drawings/renders, and they loved it! So it was decided..they would be made out of Poplar, and painted gloss piano black. I started giving more thought to the CD rails at the ends. I needed something that could move with the size of the collection, so the stationary rails were out. I was thinking along the lines of a sliding dovetail but I figured the paint would gum it up, and eventually the paint would wear at the rub spots. All of a sudden it hit me like ton of bricks….rare earth magnets! I could embed a steel bar in the top and then build a bracket with the magnets in the base. Cover the bar with a thin layer of bondo, and cover the bracket bottoms with some felt…Here is my detail sheet on how I did it.

I designed the brackets to be small versions of the same design as the shelves, with the same angle

So now I had it all worked out..time to get busy in the shop…

The shelves assembled, with the steel rail dadoed, epoxied, and screwed in. No sides yet..

At this point I wanted to do a test mount in my basement to make sure it would work and be sturdy enough..

Worked out perfectly! I just have to make sure I screw the cleats into the studs, and tight to the wall.

Here they are getting bondo …

All finished..sanded to 220 and ready for primer..

Primed, and ready for a finish coat..

My drilling jig for the magnet cup holes in the brackets. I did some tests and ended up using 1/4” and 1/2” rare earth mags in cups. After the bondo and the felt goes on that should leave me with enough magnetic attraction to keep the CDs in place but still be able to move them..

I like to cover my workbench with builders paper to keep the top from getting covered in glue and paint and I like to sketch ideas on the paper..you can see some sketches I did behind the brackets, when I was trying to work the design out..

After 4 coats of rattle can Gloss Black they were ready to be installed. I purchased some washer head, cabinet hanging screws…these are by far the BEST screws to put up french cleat brackets. They snug them to the wall nice and tight and wont pull through the cleat like a regular screw..
First cleat on the wall…

Finally finished!

They love them! She is so thrilled with how they came out. The paint looks nice..I guess I could have filled the grain a little and got more of an enamel look..but the like the slight grain showing through the paint. The brackets work better than I expected..just the right amount of hold, and not so tight that you cant just slide them back and forth. All in all I say a successful design/build. There is already talk of a second set, smaller but exactly like the first set…

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