Shelf Material

I don't know much about youngs nautilus or caterham's, but i do know kevin from muse is pretty smart and his post reminds me of what we joiner's, (that's cabinetmakers to you) call the torsion box. To create a dead flat work surface, you take 2 layers ofsheet goods, mdf, ply, osb, etc and join them with accurately cut strips of the material. Pin and glue the strips to both layers so you wind up with a "shelf that's as thick as the two layers plus the width of the joining material. I'm thinking of 2 pieces of mdf, 3/4 X 30 X18 with 3/4 mdf cut very accurately to 18 X 2. 6 pieces spaced 6" apart would be good and the voids between them could be filled with sand or marmalade or whatever damping material you like prior to glue-up. The resulting box would be 30 X 18 X 3 1/2, incredibly stiff, and dead flat. You could trim it out with your sitka spruce, kevin. Remember coming to my place in florida, giving up on grounding and sheilding away the hum in my muse one pre-amp and sending me another with a whole new internal grounding system? You are the man!

Corian is available, mainly by catalogue and online in what dupont calls "hobbyist sizes". Dupont actually licenses fabricators, going to their shops and determining if they have the expertise to fabricate and install. It is sold through home centers only on an installed basis. Check the back of Fine woodworking, etc. for ads. As it is an acrylic based material in 1/2" thick sheets, there is no way it would span 24" with a load of 30lbs or more and not sag or even break. As a countertop it is bonded to 3/4 particle board. When the combination of corian and particle board is extended more than 10" beyond a cabinet side, for example as a breakfast bar, the fabricator is required to furnish supports at a minimum of 24" spacing. You may be able to purchase suitable sized pieces from a fabricator, just as you would buy small pieces of granite or marble, but keep in mind the necessity for the use of a substrate, the particle board. Working corian requires carbide tipped tooling for the router of at least 2 1/2 h.p. and the tablesaw, at least 5 h.p. The material safety data sheets stress the use of dust masks and dust control in confined (indoors) spaces; it makes a hell of a mess, extremely fine dust. At one time a dealer friend of mine was using corian as a replacement deck for the vpi hw-19 table with the encouragement of harry weisfeld, i.e., harry was selling him parts. The sound was awesome.

Redkiwi: I.m shocked, shocked and dismayed that you would flaunt the advice of E.I. duPont deNemours in your cavalier treatment of their material. It should come as no surprise to you that I have already given your name to them. Please, no protestations, you have brought the consequences upon yourself! And if you can resist the temptation to sit on your countertops, errr, shelves, I'm glad to hear they can take the weight.