With the HiFi furniture being sorted, time to look into some acoustic damping, aka bookshelves…

Since I do have a lot of books, this seemed like a good opportunity to try out if they could be used to reduce sound reflections from the wall behind my seat as well. The design I used looks a bit like the HiFi furniture I made earlier. So of I went again to the local woodshop and load the car with the needed planks they cut for me. This time I choose rubberwood of 18 mm thick.

To see if I didn’t make any mistakes, I temporary assembled a bookshelf on the floor without fixing everything together. Looks good so far.

Time to fix everything together. Starting with the back. I used 10 cm long screws so that they can support a lot of weighty books. Assembling them takes considerably more time than the HiFi furniture I made earlier because I need to pre-drill a lot of holes for the screws and then screw everything together (and use wood glue as well for added strength).

One book shelve is assembled. Four left to go.

I found some wood filler with a color close to the color of the rubberwood. Perfect for covering the screws making them [nearly] invisible.

Time to put them in place. Don’t forget to fix the top plank of the bookshelf to the wall as well to avoid them tipping over (the usual Ikea warning :-)

Time to fill the shelves with some books. From the reactions I got from visitors listening to my HiFi system, the bookshelves definitely do their secondary job of damping acoustic reflections as well. Mission accomplished.