Pressed Particle Board Shelving Warning

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu May 27 05:57:39 2004

On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 04:18, R. D. Davis wrote:
> No other space to store some of these things, so, I'm just hoping for
> the best until I can make other arrangements, but 3/4" oak planks,
> which I'd prefer to use for adding some support, have become quite
> expensive. Replacing the particleboard would be a major pain, since
> the entire shelving assembly would have to be disassembled.

Can't you put a brace made from a piece of angle iron diagonally under
each shelf? That should significantly increase the load capacity. As
Pete says, those sorts of shelves do tend to sag a lot rather than
actually break.

I've got entirely metal shelving up in the roof space for things like
floppy and hard drives - ask around locally and you'll probably find
someone throwing some out. It's bowing slightly (surprising how much
30-odd drives weigh!) but at least I know it's not going to suddenly
break (I'm more worried about the whole lot falling through the floor to
be honest :-)

I use wooden shelving for the manuals - just cheap and nasty pine stuff
(I was given three large units which somebody was throwing out,
otherwise I would have built something a bit more substantial). So far
no problems with that, despite the weight of paper that they're holding.

'real' wood is surprisingly expensive these days it seems!

cheers

Jules
Received on Thu May 27 2004 - 05:57:39 BST