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Vintage Shelving

Lippyp

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I'm thinking about buying a couple of vintage shelving units, they're kind of cool as in the middle they have five rows of steel drawers giving 30 drawers per unit. The guy has four in total but I will only get two as they're a little pricey at £100 each but the wife has said she'll buy them for me as a moving in present for the new house/garage. I love them and they should suit the shabby vintage industrial feel I'm going to be aiming for. Will solve a lot of storage problems for small stuff too. Not the deepest shelves in the world but good for stuff like bottles of oil etc.

What do you think?

sshelving.jpg
 
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Lippyp

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Going to pick up a pair of them for £180 tomorrow 11am. The vintage shabby industrial feel kind of matches me and most of my stuff too. LOL
 
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action fab

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Hot Springs, AR.
buy them all if you can... I have the exact same ones... less shelves. But they are old green same brand and all. I love them and they're very strong. I think they are made from high carbon steel too. I tried to cut them with a sawzall and it just took the teeth off my blades...

here are mine.

paintboothshelves.jpg
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Lippyp

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They have got a name on them, I'll have a look after lunch but I do know they were made less than 15 miles away from where I live in Heywood Lancs! Heavy buggers too, I've just come back with the shelving units in the trailer and all 60 drawers in the back of the car, it sounded like an explosion in a biscuit tin factory going down a couple of bumpy stretches of back roads!

They've even got grooves in the drawers to take dividers so I can split them into smaller spaces if I want to, a sheet of thin hardboard should make some excelent dividers.
 
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Lippyp

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They are damn heavy, had to take the drawers out to make moving them easier. They're now tucked up in the back of my pickup truck ready for the move to the new house/garage where they will get a good clean and screwed to the wall as they are seven foot tall and quite shallow so I don't want them toppling over on to me! I reckon they're probably around 60 years old so maybe just post WWII.
 
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action fab

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They are damn heavy, had to take the drawers out to make moving them easier. They're now tucked up in the back of my pickup truck ready for the move to the new house/garage where they will get a good clean and screwed to the wall as they are seven foot tall and quite shallow so I don't want them toppling over on to me! I reckon they're probably around 60 years old so maybe just post WWII.

Yes I was told mine were from WWII and are surplus military. some of my shelves say "danger safty" in military style script. They came from a military surplus auction here in AR. I had never seen the drawrs but I knew they had some kind of fixture that bolted in since they have rows of 5/16" holes spaced about an inch apard going across the shelveds. Mine are a bit deeper than yours... I think they are 24" deep and were just a little over 7ft tall but I cut a foot and a half off the bottom to make getting to my metal easyer.And they are Freaking HEAVY. Mine have half the shelves yours do and I still used my fork lift to move them because I couldn't lift them by myself. I would guess yours are 300lbs-400lbs maybe more with the bins.

Really wish I could find more of these.
 
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Lippyp

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The drawers just sit on standard shelves, theres no runners or anything. They have a little lip at the back of them that stops them being pulled out as it makes them taller than the gap at the edge. They have welded on steel handles and punched out louvres on the front to take an index card. I've got a few of the original dividers in them too. They came from a motorcycle shop that was moving premises but I'm guessing they've been in business for a long time and these came out of their parts store. Its quite likely they were military surplus. I wish I'd had the cash and space to buy all four of them but I've got a lot that needs doing to the garage at the new house, not least of which will be putting in power, sorting out the roof, knocking down some internal walls, digging up the concrete floor and putting a new one down and so on, so my money has lots of things that need it and I still have to move in yet (scheduled at the moment for 9th November) and can't load up any more **** to take with us!
 
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Lippyp

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Except these are made in Heywood, Lancashire (its stamped on them) But yeah, pretty much a standard industrial product of the mid 20th century. They'll be getting filled with small parts, nuts and bolts etc etc.
 
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Lippyp

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TBH I wish I'd bought the other to but at the time I didn't have the space for them with an impending house move. As to finding them there is a link in the post above for new ones, to find old ones then its a matter of haunting ebay/craigslist/surplus places/machinery auctions.

Just to make you even more jealous heres a picture of them in my new 100 odd year old garage.

DPP_0004.jpg
 
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