Victorian Style Shelf Brackets - 4" shelf

thingiverse

My wife is a big fan of Victorian things, so when I found these fantastic faux-Victorian iron shelf brackets in a shop a while back, she was thrilled. We needed to make some small shelves for the same area of the living room, so I decided to create my own smaller brackets in the same style. After searching online using Google's search function, I found a similar shape that I could use as inspiration and imported it into Tinkercad. I used Photoshop/Inkscape to convert the decorative scroll work into a vector file that I could edit and manipulate. Once I had the design just right, I added the brackets, screw holes, and other details. The result was a beautiful set of custom-designed shelf brackets that fit perfectly with our Victorian-themed decor. To make them look even more authentic, I added a slight V groove to the edge of each bracket, which creates a subtle inset effect when mounted on the wall. This also puts the matte bottom surface facing outwards, giving it a sleek and polished appearance. I'm planning to use 4" pine boards for my shelves, but since they're only about 3 1/2" thick, I designed the brackets accordingly. To ensure a snug fit, I modified the ends of the brackets to make them slightly shorter and rounded them out a bit. These new designs, marked v3, fit the boards perfectly and look fantastic. When printing these brackets, keep in mind that they're symmetrical, so you only need to print one L or R bracket – they'll work beautifully together!