Massironi shelves are not a new thing. What I wanted to do that was different than all of these was design one that a) could be laser cut, and b) would be sized just right to serve as a kitchen spike rack!

In this Instructable, I will briefly go over how I designed it, and then how I made and assembled the shelf. As long as you have a laser cutter, this isn't that hard of a project to do

Supplies

Tools:

Laser cutter

Consumables:

Plywood (my file is sized for 0.2" thick plywood)
Brushes
Wood Stain and Finish
Something to hang the spice rack with

Step 1: Designing the Shelf

For this project I used Fusion 360. The steps for design a massironi shelf are reasonably straight forward. The steps will be a little more clear in the linked youtube video. But using the steps that I went through (there may be a more efficient way), I did the following:

[Picture 1] Made a sketch with a circle, and then took a chunk of that circle, and dimensioned it for the size that I want my spice shelf to be.
[Picture 2] Revolve that chunk of the circle to make a solid chunk of a sphere.
[Picture 3] Make another sketch, and define the dimensions of each slot on the shelf. This is done for just a quarter of the shelf.
[Picture 4] Extrude cut that sketch, then mirror it to the other parts.
After that I made a copy, so that I now have two bodies. One body will become the vertical shelves, and the other will become the horizontal shelves.
[Picture 5] Make a sketch/extrude cut the horizontal portions of the shelves so that only the vertical shelves remain.
[Picture 6] Make a sketch/extrude cut the joints that will join the shelves. These joints are half the length of the shelf at the joint location.
[Picture 7] Do step 6 and 7 the exact same again, but for the horizontal shelves, making the joints on the opposite half of the shelf.
[Picture 8] In my version, I accidentaly included a joint that didn't need to be there. This is removed on the final version that I've shared.
[Picture 9] Create a sketch for each shelf to project the geometry of that shelf. This projection can be exported into a 2D file format (DXF) for use in laser cutting.

Massironi Shelf v11.f3d
Download View in 3D

Step 2: Laser Cutting

And that’s it for the designing, now we can actually make it! Next up is the laser cutting. I designed and used .2” plywood, which is about as thick as my laser cutter can cut through.

In this step I have the laser cutting files, so that you can use them too.

Besides that, the laser cutting speaks for itself.

Step 3: Staining

Once laser cut, I sanded, stained, and then finished the wood. I used a dark wood stain, then a couple coats of polycrylic finish.

Step 4: Assembling

One of the last steps is actually assembling the shelf! At this point you can glue the shelves together if you want, but I personally thought that the shelves fit together well enough that I wasn't worried about them sliding apart when hung, and it makes it easier to disassemble if you ever plan on moving.

Step 5: Touch Ups

One of the side effects of the laser cutting process was that some of the sides were burnt black, while others were closer to the natural brown of the plywood, giving it a bit of a mottled appearance.

Because some of the sides are on the front of the shelf and very obvious, I touched them up with a black stain to give them a better and more uniform appearance.

Step 6: Complete!

The last part is hanging it on the wall and putting stuff on it. When I designed this, I didn’t have one specific way in mind for hanging the shelf. What I ended up doing was using two wall hooks that go directly into the wall, drilling two holes onto the back of the shelf, tying a string through them, and then hanging the shelf that way.

But that’s it! I Hope you enjoyed the project.