How can I support butcherblock shelves without seeing brackets

Question

I'm trying to install floating shelves made of 3/4 in butcherblock to match the countertops. The client would like the mounting hardware to be invisible if possible but these shelves will have substantial weight without anything on them. Is there any other way to do it besides drilling into hollow out a hole and hiding the bracket inside?

Answer 1

The issue here is the shelves are only 3/4 inch thick. Any hidden bracket anchored in any way may hold the weight, however The resulting thickness of the shelf will be too thin to support much weight. .75"- .5"= .25" OR even less if the support is in the middle of the shelf. .75-.5= ,25div x2= .125 or 1/8 of an inch of wood remaining.

The best answer for your question is to tell the client that their wishes cannot be safely completed and either the shelves need to be thicker or the load need to be greatly reduced, or there needs to be brackets that will be visible.

Answer 2

My contractor first used floating shelf brackets, drilling suitable holes in the back of the shelf. They bent. It was 10 years ago but I think the steel backplate of the bracket twisted. This is 40mm oak, so really heavy, but it would work equally well in thinner material.

Then he used brackets intended to be hidden behind the books. They were fine with the weight of the shelves, but bent when loaded (they were too flat to be stiff enough, so they'd hide better).

Finally I made these bookend brackets from offcuts. I meant to fill the holes with dowels, but decided against it.

So no longer floating, but very effective given what I use the shelves for. All the brackets used were screwed into the concrete blocks forming the inner skin of the wall, passing through plasterboard (drywall) and a small air gap on the way