Alder Walnut Wall Shelf

I build a minimalist elegant wall shelf from alder and walnut, practicing my hand cut dovetails and trying out a blind housing joint.

I got the idea for this shelf several months ago when watching Matt Estlea show off the blind housing joint but there was no time for taking on a new project right then.

Over the past week I managed to get some time here and there to build this project. I was a bit worried the motivation would be gone so many months later, but turns out that was not the case. I really enjoyed this build and I like the result!

The alder is from a tree on our property that came down on a road in a winter storm 2-3 years ago, our neighbor had cut it into about 1 meter long chunks so they could get to work.

I later ended up milling several of these into boards by hand on the bandsaw which was quite an ordeal, no pictures of video from that though. These were later kiln dried in a makeshift kiln I used to have setup in the barn.

Alder gets some really neat colors and patterns when it starts to decay, and I have been wanting to see how this alder would look with a finish on it. I'm not disappointed!