Gadgetory

this my friends is the stealth shelf it looks like a normal shelf from the outside but when this skull is placed in just the right position the bottom will come out revealing whatever you have hidden on the inside when I first saw the stealth shelf on the king of randoms YouTube channel I knew I had to have one and I knew my subscribers would get a kick out of it as well so I messaged him and I asked him if I could show how it works how it's made the construction and how to mount it to a wall on my channel lucky for us he had an extra kit for me to assemble and he's about to have a whole lot more kits for everyone to assemble with his Kickstarter so if you want a stealth shelf of your very own finish watching this video to see how it's made and mounted to a wall and then check out the link in the video description to get a stealth shelf of your very own the kickstarter ends this week though so don't waste too much time let's get started so here's my stealth shelf kit the package of the kick starter kit might look a bit different but all the construction will be the same as what i show you here in this video first make sure you have all the parts the kid starts off with the base of the shelf it has the two circles drilled into the top and then the three crown molding pieces that make up the sides then the middle section with its two side pieces and the large top rectangle with its three then trim pieces a package of screws the hinges the chains and the magnetic lock which I'll show you in a bit let's start with the core of the shelf this is what's going to hold all of the shelf weight so it's pretty important I'm going to use the four large screws that go through the backboard into each of the little arms pay attention to how the arms are oriented the diagonal cut on each arm is facing down and there is a little bit of space on that back board under each arm I'm going to show this whole project only using hand tools but if you have a drill it'll speed things up considerably either way this project doesn't take very long all the hard work is already done for you now that my core is done let's set that off to the side and start with my top shelf piece this is the largest wood rectangle in your kit each of these thin little decorative trim pieces will go around the edge of the board to hide the compartment door below it and to hide the layers of the top board itself so I use a dab of wood glue and spread it thin all along where the trim is going to touch spreading the wood glue thin helps it get tacky faster and it won't booze out when you put the trim in place if you are going to stain your finished shelf using wood glue would not look good with stain on it so be careful not to get glue on any visible exterior wood I line up my trim with the top layer of wood just below the flat surface of the shelf and then I use a super small finish nail to pin it in place also included with the kit if you notice the decorative trim is not flat so in order to sink the nail into the surface of the trim you'll need a nail setter if you don't have one of those you can use a longer screw or nail to get that head into the surface of the wood the side pieces of trim go on the exact same way just make sure to line up each of the 45-degree pre-cut angles with each other to make nice corners set the top on a soft rag or towel to not damage the trim as you are working on the opposite end the nice thing about this kit is that everything is already pre-cut alright now that our core and our top piece is done we're going to assemble the base lining up these huge angles can be tricky I'm going to use the same wood glueing technique as before before I line up the trim pieces with the bottom board corners I'm going to poke a small hole on my nail is going to sit this will keep the nail from sliding out of place when I hammer it down you receive quite a few of the little finished nails in this kit so feel free to add a few here and spread them out along the rest of the project trim as you need them adding the side pieces to the bottom crown molding gets a little trickier the most important part is that corner or seam where the two pieces of molding meet I want them to line up perfectly I add one small nail to the bottom corner of the board and then I tack the top corner of the trim with another nail after they are perfectly lined up this holds them in place as I add a third little nail to the far bottom corner after pulling it down just a tiny bit so it's parallel with the bottom of the base let's watch this other side and it will make a little more sense I add wood glue to all sides just like usual and then get that bottom corner next to the seam nailed first then I'll nail that top corner of the moulding to get it to line up perfectly now this crown molding was just a tiny bit off with that angle cut but since I've already lined up that corner seem perfectly and nailed it into place it can flex a little bit before I nail it to the base of the shelf and the seam will we'll be perfect because it was named first inside of your kit there is a small angle of wood this is part of the latch I decided that the strongest place for this latch to be is in the center of the shelf add a little bit of wood glue to the bottom and then nailed the little sliver into the crown molding with the small finish nails one on the top and one on the backside making sure that the nails aren't going to poke through the shelf into the front before I nail them in place if you have any extra small finish nails feel free to spread them around the rest of the trim so everything's held securely in place and before I add any hardware I'm going to add the color one nice thing about building your own shelf is that you get to pick the color you can stain it or paint it however you want I chose a dark stain I apply a thin coat of stain with a rag and then while it's still wet I wipe off the excess liquid so it leaves an even coloring across all of the wood it helped to drip a little bit of extra stain into the fine details of the crown molding since the rag wouldn't reach it directly and then I can wipe off the excess still no matter what you decide to use regular paint or stain make sure that you start in a non visible area like the inside or the bottom so that any early mistakes will be hidden from view now that the stain or paint is dry we can add the hardware these are called mortise pull overlay cup hinges in this kit all of the hard legwork is already done the hole in the base is drilled out and the screw locations on that Center core piece that we already assembled are pre marked as well you should expand the hinge first though just loosen up that top screw and slide the middle part up it is a small adjustment but it'll give you a bit more room to play with tighten that top screw back down to finalize the adjustment the bottom screw on this hinge is used to adjust how close the bottom drawer sits to the wall I'll show you that in a second loosely screw the hinges into the pre marked holes on the center core but don't tighten them down all the way just yet we need to get the screws lined up in the bottom part of the hinges first then when all the screws are all lined up tighten each screw all the way it's time to attach the top shelf I propped up the center core with my pliers so that the core is level then I took the larger nails and hammered that top board into the center core making sure to sink a few nails into the core arms as well for security and it works the Shelf opens and closes without the bottom board touching the table this is important because if it touches the table during the opening process it will also touch and damage your wall when it's sewn up the nice thing about these hinges is that you can adjust the bottom screw so if it touches the table or you just want a bit more space screw in that bottom screw a bit and it will lift that bottom edge of your shelf away from the wall giving it more room to move now for the magic this is a little plastic lip that goes with the locking mechanism this lip gets installed flush with that little piece of extra wood that we nailed in earlier make sure that the top of this latch the little piece of wood and the top of the molding are all flat with each other here is the magnetic lock when any strong magnet gets close it unlocks itself even through the thick top word of this shelf lining this magnetic lock with that little plastic lip is pretty easy I use the toothpaste trick from grants video apply toothpaste to the top a little plastic bit and when the shelf is shut a dab of toothpaste gets left on the top board letting us know generally where the lock needs to sit i mark the screw holes with a lock and then set my two screws in place it doesn't need to be super exact at this point because the lock can be slid up or down along the screws so if it doesn't connect with the plastic the first time adjust it again until the whole latch is making contact with its little plastic counterpart then when the magnet is placed on top it will unlock allowing you full access to your hidden goodies inside now this last bag contains the chains I use my screwdriver to pilot a little hole into the arms of the core and then stick the screw into the circular washer and then through the chain and then repeated the process on the other end of the chain making sure that both chains have the same tension on either side so mounting a shelf is going to be a new puzzle all by itself in most North American homes we have something called drywall which is the outside of the wall if you screw a shelf in the drywall the shelf can't hold much weight this is what happened when my roommate put these floating shelves in and this one ripped out of the wall so with my floating shelf since it's going to have stuff inside of it we want to find something called a stud the studs happen every 16 inches inside of this drywall you can take a stud finder and place it on the wall to tell you where the studs are at or you can just knock on the wall wait till he has something solid and you found a stud so if you're going to be hanging your shelf on concrete or brick your I need something like this this is called a lead anchor you drill a hole in the concrete or the brick set the lead anchor and then your screws will go through the shelf into the anchor supposedly these anchors hold about 50 pounds so as long as you have one anchor on either side of the shelf you should be good to go so these holes are drilled exactly 16 inches apart and so they should be able to hit two studs right there on that wall the holes drilled into the back of the shelf make it easier to find the studs I set one screw into place and then use the level to make sure that the shelf isn't sitting crooked before putting in the rest of the screws remember measure twice cut once double check all of your measurements and stud locations before hanging the Shelf all right so we have the Shelf installed I have taken a skull and put in some magnets on the bottom of them they're the rare earth magnets they can get on Amazon for pretty cheap and so when I line this skull up with the little lock it will latch and unlatch so we can close it up it's locked looks like a normal shelf then I take the skull unlock it it'll drop back down now grant the king of random is using his shelf to hide weapons passports or even money but my own research has concluded that this shelf is perfect for hiding 60 Oreos or 200 strands of licorice or even 3481 skittles if you want one of these kits for yourself I will link the Kickstarter in the video description of this video if you enjoyed watching this project and want to see a bunch of other creative projects by the king of random head on over to his YouTube channel thanks for watching hope to see you around so there's a shelf just barely finish the skill seen luckily we didn't get too many on the carpet my little makeshift funnel worked out pretty well