Strong freestanding metal shelves (post up!)

[danielbuck]

Going to be building some metal shelving to hold a lot of my small parts drawers & hardware. It amazes me how heavy this stuff gets!

It'll be made out of 1" .120 wall square steel tubing with leveling feet, and either sheet metal shelf tops or wood, not sure. But either way there will be bracing under the shelf tops to take the load. Might bump the tubing up to 1.5"

I'm going to make it pretty basic, but sturdy. I'd love to see what others have done just for fun/inspiration

I'll post mine up when I get started on it (probably this weekend)

 

[cvairwerks]

I used pallet racking in my storage areas. Went with the Husky 4 shelf units and only used two shelves
per bay. Used the other two to connect a second set, so got 36 linear feet of shelving per two sets of uprights. I think I've got about 300 linear feet of shelf now. I've got two bays in my office set up as a desk and a work area.
Great thing about the units, is that it takes about 5 minutes to set up each bay. I set the first two sets in the warehouse and loaded them up and then a couple of days later picked up more sets and carried on.

I've got several bays of bigger racking that came out of the hangar, but it's all too tall to use right now.

 

[matt_i]

16ga sheetmetal is strong enough for the whole thing, you can load a Vidmar up with a literal ton of stuff and its just hanging out. The carriage that holds the drawer might be 3/32"/.090" thick but hopefully you get the general idea. .120" wall ERW (electric resistance welded) tube is going to be very good.

The tough part is to get the structure into the flat sheetmetal without stamping to create ribs and bends that create rigidity. You can do a lot of good with a finger brake. Also helpful is welding various pieces of flat bar "on edge" to improve the structure.

 

[larry_g]

If you look close you can see one of my shelve units in the bottom right. It is 1" tubing and 8' long, 2' deep and ~5' high. As you can see on the middle shelf it is stocked with steel and no signs of sagging.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[deezilram]

I'm using several shelves similar to this setup - I found a bunch of the shelving on Craigslist and pieced it together then went and bought the bins online. Def have a little money in it but it was worth if for the 180 or so individual storage bins.

https://megadepot.com/product/edsal...6-poly-plastic-bins-heavy-duty-steel-shelving

 

[sberry]

I bought the 2 big ones used and the little one was a gift. I sheeted the end of one big one for paint. Who ever built them knew exactly what they were doing.
He used angle instead of tubing.

 

[sberry]

Had some shelves, welded them to well pipe. super fast, super strong, took me about an hour once I got up to speed. If one notes, most common shelves designed and built with angle. The trend of using tubing everywhere in sight comes from copying commercial produced designs vs hand built.
I did about 200 benches for a plant. They wanted tube legs which I did but all the rest of it,, including them gang cut on a band saw at 90 degrees. I rarely miter anything. When I do its usually from a square cut and nip a corner with a plasma.
I have 3 or 4 of the rolling ones like the center pic, I added center posts to this, rebar for shelves and planks. You can paint or be as simple or fancy as desired. On the big ones above I simply re painted the faces white.
I agree that pallet racking would be a great start. In pic 3 here you can see mobile home beams. At one point a lot of places were giving racking away, when I wanted it steel was high and used rack was astronomical. I used oak 2x6 to support the building sheeting girts and beams from mobile homes.
Pic 4, can just see to the left set of stuff, all steel and had a whole pile of shelves and some posts. I used extra shelves on sides and back with heavy self drillers. An extra post in middle front and can handle hundreds of # per shelf. They are in shop and painted up at the time. The cubes were a gift, they are wood but very well built and sturdy, painted them. Put on a base for pallet jack.

 

[1slow62]

Facebook market place. I found a manufacturing shop going out of business. Got 2 12'X8' and 1 10'X8' pallet racking systems with bar grating for $200. The 12'ers have 2 shelves and the 10'er has 1 shelf

 

[danielbuck]

I've been sick this weekend, so didn't get much done on the shelves. Got the threaded "pucks" made that I'll weld on the bottom of the shelf legs to thread in leveling feet. 1.5" steel round bar, 1/2"-13 threads. Bandsaw cut, drilled and tapped on the lathe. Taping done by hand with a regular tap, just using the lathe to keep things centered.

Haven't yet decided if I'm going to have 6 feet or 8, so since I was already setup making these I just made 8.

 

[Ray916MN]

My workshop has pallet racking and gorilla racking for shelving, but I store things like motorcycles and motorcycle engines in it.

For lighter duty (storing magazine collection) I use some shelving I got from Global Industries. 7 shelf 18ga units rated at 400 lbs per shelf. The front row is mounted on casters so the shelving is two deep.

They make these shelves in thicker gauges if you need to handle more weight.

 

[bad_idea]

I work in ship repair. Lots of heavy stuff. We use 20' and 40' conex boxes for mobile workshop/storage. We also use them out in the side yard for long term storage of materials. I have built many foot of shelving in the conex boxes. I use 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" x 1/4" angle for the legs and the shelf frames. The shelves are a basic picture frame of angle iron with cross pieces every 2'. Sheet the shelves with 1/2" plywood or 1/8" plate. Depends on what we are storing on the shelves. Stitch weld the plate to the shelves and you could store SBCs on the shelves.

At the house I use this stuff:

Not a pic of my garage, just a generic pic off the internet. I have dragged this stuff home from the scrap bins, and bought used. I don't think I've bought any new. I have enough to stretch 12' of wall 8' high. I used 5/8 particle board on the higher shelves and 3/4" plywood on the lower shelves. Coat the shelves in polyurethane to make them last longer. Biggest thing that kills the particle board is moisture not the weight. I have a power glide transmission stored on one of the shelves in the shed now. Has been on the shelf for 2 years now with no sign of sagging.

 

[danielbuck]

Transmission, that's only like 100-150 pounds or so, eh? I think I have some of the same shelves that a friend gave me, and yea, the particle board was the first thing to go because they were outside for a while. The frames however, seem to be pretty sturdy. I'm still using the frames, just replaced the particle board with hardwood and some make-shift cross beams. It works.

 

[danielbuck]

cutting the material for the shelves.

Here's how I square up the material with a small square. Don't assume that the tubing that you purchase is the correct length, or cut straight. Always rely on your own cuts if the lengths and squareness matter. Cut both ends if it needs to be exact.

I use an old hammer head (brass?) to tap the material into place. I've had it for a long time, it fits my hand nicely, and doesn't dent steel. Denting doesn't matter for this project, but it works very well just the same.

Here's how off the cuts are from the metal factory, the opposite end of the 1x2" tubing after I square one end. These will be the long lengths of the shelving. I only had 6 pieces in my storage, I'll have to pick up more to finish the shelves.

 

[tarbellb]

Clearly you are already pushing forward with this project, likely more for fun then cost vs function but...

the Costco Whalen Industrial Rack shelving units that go on sale regularly for $120 (member pricing) are very nice. 2000lbs per shelf, modular.

If you run out of time/effort you may want to check them out.

 

[danielbuck]

I have some "1000 pound per shelf" shelves from Lowes... which by my rough estimates should have been strong enough. But I doubt they hold near 1000 pounds on any of the shelves. I started moving my bolt bins and hardware onto the shelvs, and it started twisting. I maybe had 300 pounds on there before i gave up. I don't trust these slotted thin angle iron and wire mesh shelves. Those pound ratings are for very evenly distributed weight. Not heavy items located anywhere near the middle of the shelves.

I will keep those shelves, but they will hold lighter things, cardboard boxes full things. Not heavy hardware.

I figure I'll just make the shelves the size I want, and they will be WAY stronger than what I can buy locally. Material costs might be around what commercial shelves would cost, but mine will hold more weight.

And yes, I love making things Making my own shelves was the end goal here, since I knew I was going to do that.

 

[CaptDan]

DanielBuck

What brand of "work support" is that under your steel holding it up for the bandsaw?

 

[1slow62]

Ended up going with 3 10' high pallet racking systems. Best $200 bucks I've spent.

 

[danielbuck]

DanielBuck

What brand of "work support" is that under your steel holding it up for the bandsaw?

They are Sumner ST-881, about $75 or so each. I have two of them, and I'd not hesitate to recommend them, well made. I originally got them to hold up one end of a vehicle higher off the ground, and to hold a vehicle axle high enough to work on it comfortably. But they wobble a bit when they are extended. They hold static weight nicely, but side load is a bit wobbly, I didn't feel comfortable using them to hold a vehicle while my *** is under there pulling and pushing on the vehicle while working on it. Just don't like the wobble. Not that they are going to fall over, but if I had more rigid stands on the other end of the vehicle, I just didn't like part of the vehicle potentially being able to move.

However, they work GREAT for material handling like this though. You can quickly raise the tube (just grab it and move it up), and then do fine adjustments with the large acme nut. The tube is held by a large washer that is held at a slight angle, as soon as it catches it holds really well until you lift it upwards again. It's a strange way of going about it (I would have never thought to do it that way), but it does seem to work pretty good.

One of my next projects is going to be adding rollers to them, a roller that I can remove if I want to use the regular V head. I believe these are rated at 2500 pounds or something like that? Probably way overkill for a material handling stand, but they also get used elsewhere.

To set the height, I put a level on the machined surface of the bandsaw, then put some tubing in the vise held up by the stand. Put the level on the tubing and raise/lower the stand until it's the same reading as the machined surface on the bandsaw. That works pretty well. My floor in this garage is NOT flat, or level :-\ My old garage had a nice level floor.

Ended up going with 3 10' high pallet racking systems. Best $200 bucks I've spent.

unfortunately right now I'm working out of a 1 car garage, those things would take up 1/2 the garage, haha! I'm going to keep them in mind for the workshop that I'm trying to get permits to build.

 

[danielbuck]

Got the 3 main shelves tacked and partially welded. There will be one more shelf about 1 foot below the middle shelf, and that will be where I'll keep all of my 1-2' long drop pieces, and short stock pieces for the lathe. With 9 feet of shelf, I think I should be able to keep the short pieces of material well organized.

I'm also going to add one brace to the back side of the shelves and a few more spans on the top shelf. But this is where i got yesterday. Also picked up wood to lay on the shelves. I'll round over the corners of the wood, cut notches where the corners meet up with the legs, and probably screw them into the angle iron cross pieces from the bottom. We'll see, once I get things on the shelves I may not need to screw the wood in place. Thoughts?

In the middle of the long spans I drilled a hole in the bottom of the tube (for the leveling feet bolts to have room to go inside the tube) and then welded on my threaded puck. On the legs, the puck is just welded to the bottom of the tube and the bolt goes up inside the tube.

And since the long spans were already measured and square to the legs (which takes a little while with just one person and no flat surface! Levels, squares, clamps and ratchet straps.... ), I just use scrap metal to clamp the short spans in to place for tacking. Quick, easy, and no measuring. Keeps them flat with the long spans.

Same with the angle iron spans along the inside of the shelves, use a thick flat piece of scrap to clamp the angle iron to, quick throw a square on there and tack it in.

After tacking, I tilted the shelves to get better angle for welding. I'm just a hobbyest welder... so I try to give my self the best chance to get comfortable. So far I've never had any welds fail on me. My welding table is in storage right now, it's to large to fit in the garage :-( **** working without it

 

[jimgood]

I took a different approach for hardware.

View media item 55006
Build details start here: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5272318&postcount=105

 

[danielbuck]

metal work on the shelves done. I'm PROBABLY just going to leave it bare metal. I never have a problem with things rusting in my garage(s) (my old garage never had problems either).

I decided to put a center support, putting good weight on the shelves would bend slightly in the middle (9 foot span), so this will keep it from bending. The angle iron will also allow me to easily run wires up the center post for shelf lighting and a few power plugs mounted to the shelves (right now the shelf is blocking 4 outlets.)

Will notch the wood boards and start loading things on there

 

[danielbuck]

wood is finished cutting. I thought about rounding over the corners with a router and staining the wood... but honestly it's probably going to get pretty beat up, so I think I'm just going to leave it as is.

I have alot of organizing to do, and alot of items to bring over from storage still. Heavy items will go on here, lighter items will go on the "1000 pound per shelf" home depot shelves.

 

[Richard D]

All that work and your not going to paint it?

 

[danielbuck]

All that work and your not going to paint it?

Nah, I usually don't paint items like this that stay inside.

Started loading up stuff, I'll grab a photo this weekend. it's working nicely.