Storage and shelving ideas

I've noticed a couple of ideas being bandied around in random threads recently and thought it might be useful if we pool all our ideas into a single thread

My own problem was metal shelving in a garage with a wonky floor and breeze block walls

I wasn't going to drill holes into breeze blocks to secure my shelves, I don't trust them because they crumble too easily, especially under side loading and I was going to be putting some big lumps of metal onto heavy duty shelves which were set on some not properly flat concrete flooring

My solution was to jam the top of each shelf unit with oak 2x4s, pinning them against the walls

the end of each beam was cut by 50% to slot downwards on the shelving

This also gave me even MORE storage space because there's a two foot gap above the beams, it's very stable and not a single hole was required to be drilled in a wall

The walls are grey

The shelving yellow

The beam is in red

Edited By Ady1 on 15/09/2013 02:53:05

Edited By Ady1 on 15/09/2013 02:56:47

Most of the stands for the imported machines tend to have a bent sheet metal panel between the two cabinet legs which reall is a waste of space. I knocked up a carcase with solid back to keep things rigid and then made 4 simple draws and fitted them with full extension runners. Handy for all the small lathe tooling with the larget stuff going into the cabinets.

I bought these but was reluctant to have them fixed to a wall for space reasons. I therefore made trolleys from 100mm x 50mm wood and castors for a two bay and a single bay. The advertisement shows some significantly heavy weights being supported but their construction is such that I had to buy some galvanized steel herringbone strutting from my local builders' merchant to triangulate them. I have no problems now and it helps me to have them mobile. I do though have the sense to place the very heavy weights on the bottom shelves.

Neat idea Ady

I don't know if it was strictly necessary to use oak - unless of course you " had some about you "!

"The walls are grey

The shelving yellow

The beam is in red"

Now that seems familiar ........ some song I've heard with the Grandbrats maybe?

Regards

Norman

Ah - my Chief cook and Financial controller tells me that it is probably :-

"The ink is black, the page is white, together we learn to read and write........"  that I'm thinking of.

( She often needs to tell me what I'm thinking about)

N

Edited By NJH on 15/09/2013 10:42:42

Costco do a heavy duty 4 shelf unit 6'x2'x6' for only about £120 that is tated at about a ton. It is very solid and when I get the space intend to use one as a bench as it is that solid. The cost of plain angle iron would be £100.

hi Andy
look for a local skip where they are throwing out kitchen units clean them up and fix them to the wall. sounds like your walls are not breezeblock but thermalite. If so good solid fixeings are needed and not dare I say it but not B&Q it. a decent builders merchant. Now you can plan where to hang everything.
Good luck and very little dosh.
Bob.

If the blocks are concrete breeze blocks they'll be fine for fixing with raw plugs. If thermalite I'd probably run a batten along the top of the shelf and fix into the mortar between the blocks, then secure the shelving to the batten. Alternativley the No-more-nails type of fixing would be good on a block wall with the batten method, but I wouldn't recommend it on thermalite.

Your problem with thermalite is using Rawl Plugs (and similar expanding mouldings). There are some continous lengths of plastic plugging available which can be cut to length and, when placed in a close fitting hole, are expanded all around by the screw passing down a central hole which has 3 radial slots.. I have shelving system verticals with slip in shelf suports and am carrying around 100 kg of metal on 2 8 ft shelves. All fixed into thermalite with 3 inch screws.

Edited By KWIL on 15/09/2013 14:27:38