The overall shelf's structure comprises several elements:

I had to make provisions for this structure throughout the construction process, and that makes it difficult to describe the project in strictly linear fashion. Therefore, I'll just show some photos that illustrate parts of the process.

Here's the back panel skeleton showing the shelf dowel holes.

Here's a close-up of one of the cleats.

Before I attached the back panel's skin, I placed it skin-side down, placed the wall-side halves of the French cleats in place, and then screwed temporary braces to them, resulting in this mounting guide. The goal here was not having to measure each wall cleat's location when I installed the completed shelf.

After all the skeletons were assembled, I clamped the entire structure to my workbench in preparation for drilling the 3/4" alignment dowel holes in the backs of the shelves.

I used scraps of plywood as spacers to account for the thickness of the skins. I didn't take a photo, but I clamped the back panel to the shelf/side structure and used a 3/4" Forstner bit in the panel s dowel mark the locations of the matching holes in the shelves. After separating all the skeletons, I finished drilling the holes on my drill press (to make sure they were perpendicular).

I also removed the spacers, clamped the structure back together, and drilled the 3/8” holes in the bottom and top edges of the short sides for the dowels that would connect the vertical sides to the shelves. I had previously drilled the dowel holes at the ends of the shelves (in the outermost ribs) with a drill press. I used those existing holes as guides for drilling the holes in the sides.

Because the skins covered the dowel holes at the ends of the shelves, I needed a way to drill matching holes in the skins. Before gluing on the skins, I had made a drilling template.

Despite my best efforts, all this work with the shelf/side dowel holes turned out to be mostly useless. Because there was some slop in how I glued the skins to the outside shelf edges, the dowels didn't align the sides to the shelf edges perfectly. I ended up shortening the dowels to nubs that were useful only for very rough alignment during final assembly.

2/6/2026 Note: If I were building this unit today, I wouldn t pre-drill the dowel holes at the end of the shelf ribs before attaching the skins. I d glue the skins on, then use my JessEm doweling jig to drill the holes in the shelves and sides. They'd line up properly.

With this structural interlude complete, I'll move on to finishing next.