Garage shelving from cattle panels

[Seezle]

I found someone getting rid of their old metal horse corral fences for free to anyone who would come out and cut them up, so I went out with my daughter and we cut 'em up and hauled 'em back to the house. I wanted to create some kind of four-tiered garage shelving and these provided a skeletal framework with hurricane fence clamps in the corners.

Steel_Frame.jpg (131.1 KiB) Viewed 5065 times

Over the course of the next few days I made numerous panel glue-ups, router sledded them flat and rounded the edges. It wound up being an efficient way to get rid of extra old wood.

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Rounded_Wood.jpg (61.78 KiB) Viewed 5065 times

I then drilled holes in the shelf edges for the supports to thread through, screwed the rear support to the wall studs and and machine-screwed each wood panel to their support bar.

A little linseed oil, black paint on the bars and boom shaka: Garage shelving with a friendly lip to place filled roughnecks etc on. I thought even for industrial garage shelving I wanted something large, strong and with a slightly minimalist aesthetic. Cross-braces on the side are pending.

Cattle Fence Shelf.jpg (74.07 KiB) Viewed 5065 times

I don't know if anyone else has used deprecated horse fence or cattle panel for shelf supports but it wound up being a good resource for me.

Scott

[edma194]

What a great way to re-use materials. You got a great deal on the metal Scott, and then you used up left over wood for the shelves. Looks really nice to me. Way better than some of the shaky shelves I scrounged up in the past. You probably want those cross braces so you can load up a lot of weight on those shelves, but the braces don't have to be very heavy, just some sheet metal strips bolted to the posts under tension.

How did you join the boards for the shelves? Any dowels or biscuits?

[Seezle]

Ed:

Thanks - I promised not to spend a lot on materials while I learn woodworking and 'free metal' had my number. Also any new lumber was from the 70% off pile at Home Depot.

I made each panel in 2 foot sections with just glue and pipe clamps. I then used glue and dowels to join the two foot parts together for longer sheets. Cross braces are a must - I made a test shelf earlier using pipes and palettes and the whole thing scissored on me in a terrifying way I won't forget. Luckily I have leftover pipe for the cross-braces, I'll be putting those on today so we can load Xmas back up until next year.

The invention/noodling/building is fun, very much legos for grownups, yeh?