This one was a fun project. A client came to me wanting a custom bookshelf with a steel frame and wood shelves, and after pitching her a few different design directions, everything from dead simple to something a little more geometric and ornate. She landed on a three-bar decorative detail between the legs and shelves. I liked all the options I showed her, honestly, so I’m filing the others away for future clients. It’s a good way to build up a visual vocabulary you can pull from when someone new walks in the door. This is a great example of where wood meets steel.
Here’s how the whole thing came together.
Cutting the Steel
The first thing I had to do was cut a whole lot of parts. I used my little Harbor Freight metal cutting band saw for this. Look, I have a complicated relationship with that saw. It’s rickety, it doesn’t always cut perfectly square, and it has its quirks. But I’ll say this, the thing just keeps running. It never quits. So as much as it annoys me, it’s earned its place in the shop.
Cutting through steel takes time. You’re not rushing that band saw. While it was working through one piece, I kept it running and moved on to other tasks rather than standing there watching it.
Once the parts were cut, I drilled holes in the flat bar pieces that would eventually get welded between the legs. These bars are what I use to fasten the wood shelves to the steel frame, so the holes are just there for the screws later on.
Cleaning Off the Mill Scale
Fresh steel comes covered in mill scale, which is a dark, flaky layer that forms during the rolling process. You’ve got to get rid of it before welding or finishing. The quickest way I’ve found is a stripping wheel on a handheld grinder. It chews through the mill scale fast and leaves you with clean bare metal underneath.
I had a lot of parts to strip, so I put my earbuds in, queued up some music, and just got into a rhythm. It took a while, but that’s the job. The Denver Design Center has nothing on this level of detail.
Welding the Sub-Assemblies
Rather than trying to weld the whole bookshelf frame at once, I broke it down into smaller sections. My approach was to weld up the sub-assemblies first. The decorative three-bar sections in particular, and then bring everything together into the full piece. It keeps things manageable and makes it easier to get good, accurate results.
I set up my fixture table for this. Once I had the first section dialed in, it was basically rinse and repeat: pop the finished piece out, load the new parts in, weld, repeat. Goes pretty fast once you’re in a groove, and the consistency is hard to beat.
I’ll also be honest here. I’m a better grinder than I am a welder. So after each weld, I spent some time cleaning things up with the grinder to get the look I was after. No shame in that. The grinder is part of the process.
Welding Up the Full Sides
Once all my sub-assemblies were done, it was time to weld up the complete sides. This is where things got a little awkward. My fixture table is only so big, and this bookshelf is not small. The piece hung off the edges a bit, which isn’t ideal.
But here’s the thing — don’t let a fixture table that’s too small stop you. With good clamps and careful attention to keeping everything square against the table, the sides came out perfectly square. I can’t find anything to complain about in the final result, even with the awkward setup.
I tackled it in stages: tacked everything up first before committing to full welds. That let me flip the frame over, get the bottom pieces in place, tack those, and then check the whole thing for square before running any final beads. Once I was happy with everything, I went through and fully welded it all up.
Building the Wood Shelves
With the metal frame done, I shifted over to the wood side of things. This part is pretty straightforward carpentry; there’s nothing exotic about it. I had quite a few shelves to make (more than I’d like to count), so I set up an assembly line to keep things moving.
The process was: cut the boards to width, joint the edges, glue up the panels, run them through the planer, sand, and finish. Then do it again. And again. Getting into that assembly line rhythm is the key to making a repetitive process like this feel manageable rather than miserable.
The walnut came out great. It pairs really nicely with the raw steel frame, and the warmth of the wood against the industrial metal is exactly what we were going for. This is a project where wood meets steel.
Final Thoughts
This piece is a good example of how breaking a big project into smaller stages keeps things from feeling overwhelming. Cut the parts, clean the parts, weld the sub-assemblies, weld the full frame, and build the shelves. Each step is doable on its own, and before long, you’ve got a finished bookshelf sitting in front of you.
I’m the owner of Benham Design Concepts, a mixed media art studio where I design and build custom furniture and other works of art using wood, glass, stone, and various metals.
In this blog, I talk about the art I create, my journey, and the things I learn along the way.