Solid Mango Wood Bookshelf

Details

A bookshelf in solid mango, Mangifera indica, from the Jodhpur timber trade, with shelves housed into the uprights and a 6 mm plywood back set into a rebate. Two things are cheated here and both are invisible on a showroom floor. The first is the material: a solid wood bookshelf whose shelves are 15 mm particleboard with a 2 mm edge band, which looks identical until it swells at the first spill. The second is sag. A shelf is a beam, and a beam that is too thin over too long a span bows under books within a year, so the number that decides the product is deflection at a stated load over a stated span, which no listing prints. The back panel is where we would have to lie to say solid wood everywhere, so we do not. It is 6 mm plywood, deliberately, because a solid back that wide would cup and split, and it is set into a rebate all round rather than pinned to the face, which is what stops the carcass racking.

• Carcass, uprights and shelves in solid Mangifera indica, no particleboard and no MDF
• The 6 mm plywood back is declared rather than rounded into the words solid wood
• Shelves in 20 mm solid stock, housed into the uprights and glued, not shelf pins in a drilled strip
• Deflection under 1.5 mm at the rated 30 kg per shelf over a 750 mm clear span
• Kiln-dried to 8 to 10 percent, under IS 287, and pin-metered before dispatch
• Back panel to E1, below 0.124 mg per cubic metre formaldehyde by EN 717-1
• Waterborne polyurethane, VOC under 50 g per litre, IS 9873 Part 3 migration tested
• The 180 cm version ships with a steel anti-tip strap and wall plugs, and it should be used. A tall shelf loaded top-heavy tips onto a child, and no finish or joint prevents that
• Mango is an open-grained timber with dark mineral streaks. Those are the tree, not a flaw.