I've put up my own shelves with proper brackets. But I see these "floating shelves" advertised. I thought, "What's holding them up?" Apparently there's no right angle involved, just a screw going straight into the back of the shelf out of the wall. How can that possibly support anything?
But proper shelves have an angled bracket which can hold a lot of weight. Nothing without a 45 degree support can hold weight. Just try holding a car battery at arms length. Now support your arm at your elbow by using the other arm at 45 degrees.
We have a couple. They are full of books. No problems. Ours have ends which have mounting screws. I've also put up others (for daughter) which have a plate with rods which stick out. The shelf has holes the rods fit into. Also used for books.
I confess I've been surprised how well they work.
I think ours came from Ikea. I suspect daughters' did as well but I don't recall.
Here's one style :
The " Instr " link on the web page does give more details : " secure the base plate using a #8 x 1-1/2" (or longer) flat-head screws " .. that's for wood studs ; for metal studs - read the Instr. . The weight bearing ability is in the product description. John T.
That's wrong too. There is no need for the lower screws, they just stop the bracket sliding down the wall and the top screws do that fine. The bracket pivots around the bottom edge of the bracket and it's the top screws that stop the shelf tilting under load.
I hate them. So often they are not tight and slide out leaving stickyout rods that are invisible until you bump into one :-)
Brian
To support the shelf properly, you should build support all the way down to the buildings footings.
But if you consider a normal shelf bracket, there's half of it flat against the wall, this stops the shelf bending downwards.
Yes, but again, it doesn't need screws at the bottom of that except to stop the entire bracket swivelling around the top screw so it isnt vertical anymore.
Brian prefers you reply at the top.
I have freestanding dexion shelves in the garage, several shelves in the house made of wood and proper mitred supports, and in the bathroom normal little glass shelves with proper attachments which aren't invisible and can take weight.
Or anyone, as the stuff on the shelf is now on the floor broken into pieces.
I can imagine the actual screw taking a fair sideways load, but it'll gradually work it's way loose in the wood.
Not required, the wall does that. All you need is to make the bracket not bend from 90 degrees to the wall.
On 5/17/2019 3:23 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote: ...
What do you mean by "sideways"? The screw is in tension, not shear.
As far as loosening, in an application like this, it'll still be there when you (and your grand-kids) are long gone.
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I just did the moment arm balance below -- the rated 100 lb distributed load on a 5" wide shelf is reasonably conservative compared to estimated limits.
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I'd expect the shelves to split at some point. All that weight concentrated on one bit of wood.
Nope.
The force on the screw is pulling it out of the wall with those rods with a metal plate that is screwed to the wall, the metal plate is turning on the bottom edge of the plate, pulling the screw out of the wall.
That's the only part you did manage to get right.
Works fine if you get the hole size right and the wood is solid enough.
Absolutely not. The screw is in tension.
The shelf isn't hanging on the screw, it's hung on the rod which transfers the load to the plate by the rigid mounting which tries to rotate and thus puts the screw in tension.
NB: both screws are position _above_ the rod to resist that transferred moment.
What plate?
Weight on the shelf tries to make the screw become lower than horizontal. Just like if you stretch your arms out and someone hangs heavy objects on your hands. Your arms are pulled down.
I thought the whole idea was it was invisible. Jut a rod terminating in a single screw, all inline. If there's a plate, surely that's visible?
What you described sounds like a normal shelf bracket. So how are these invisible?
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