shelving: spacing of rails?

If yiour subsrate s sioud, and yiou make a fiar job, the limiting facti will noit be teh uprights pulling ou of the walls, it will be the bowing of the shelves.

I put up some of this sort of thing in an alcove once, to take my weighty LPs in the days when LPs were what one had. The shelves (12mm melamine/chip) bowed alarmingly over half a meter span.

The brackets looked a bit sorry too, but the uprights never budged.

In message , Fred writes

What you need is the Sagulator, which calculates such things :

You dont say what load youre looking at, nor what type and thickness of shelf. Once you've figured those out, check out the sagulator.

I'm not a big fan of those slotted strips myself, they dont handle the sort of loads I'd expect them to very well, like shelves packed with books. So I'd be inclined to put them on the close side, like 2' apart or maybe 18" for big books.

NT

Oh contraire Rodney. I am a big fan of them :-)

You can get more fixings in the wall, in line, using slotted strips and they spread the load.

Three uprights per 4ft shelf - 6" from each end and one in the middle.

JGH

Yes, the weakpoint is the little tabs that hold the horizontal brackets in.

NT

Not sure about "rules" although there are some rules of thumb. If doing the classical straight shelf with two supports, then they work best about 20 - 25% of the way in from each side. That way roughly half the shelf is over each bracket (with a slight bias toward wider spacing)

You need to consider the total load, its distribution, the shelf material, depth, and thickness.

If you forget 12mm thick shelving for anything other than lightweight stuff (unless braced with front and rear rails). 19mm chipboard is probably a realistic minimum for a decent shelf. MDF is ok, but tends to sag a bit more.

Worst case would be heavy loads like reference books on say a 10" deep shelf. You would probably need to go at 400mm centres to eliminate sag there.

If the shelves are deeper, you can go to wider spacing. Same for thicker.

For my workshop I used 19mm MDF, and made the shelves 500mm deep, about

group:

If you buy Spur (or similar clones these days) then I would refrain from referring to it as weak - it may be the weakest part of the arrangement, but its certainly more than adequate in my experience. (although I would agree that some of the lightweight ali, or single strip steep stuff has its limitations)

group:

I was thinking of the double slot type. I agree, the single slot is rubbish.

Fair point, but on the other hand, pqwoorec qksb ienvp poirnviq iewb lirstv irvrjmw, ecvaoc.

YMMV David

group:

I have actually stood on a spur bracket plugged into a fixed upright once. It survived, and that is more stress that it is reasonable to expect it to cope with! ;-)

If the ends of the shelves are free, and there are two rails, I put the brackets a quarter of the board length from the ends so they take equal shares of the weight. Your actual spacing depends on how thick your boards are; how flexible; how heavy the stuff you are putting on them, etc.

If the ends of the shelves are free, and there are two rails, I put the brackets a quarter of the board length from the ends so they take equal shares of the weight. Your actual spacing depends on how thick your boards are; how flexible; how heavy the stuff you are putting on them, etc.

So 18" apart or 45cm. Thanks.

but tends to

I have some melamine faced chipboard from the shelves that were already there but can't remember what thickness they are. I will need to buy more shelves though, so I am open to suggestions about the best type of wood to use. I suppose the melamine faced products save the time and trouble of painting them but I suppose that comes at a price? They are for my garage so do not have to be particularly pretty but I think bare mdf or chipboard would benefit from a coat of something so that they don't get ruined if I spill something!

Thanks.

Sorry, I should have said: these are to go in my garage. I think the LP example is a good one: one LP doesn't weigh very much but when you have a collection they weigh a tonne. Individually I don't think any of my tools is that heavy but together, I am sure they will present a decent weight.

So it seems that any rules of thumb are more to do with preventing bowing rather than the rails falling off the wall.

I will download the sagulator.

Thanks.

I was thinking of using the double slotted type with brackets that protrude the depth of the shelf, like these:

Thanks.

Oddly chip is probably beter than anything, or MDF.

but tends to

Bare chip and to heck with the spills. As long as they are not water.