I agree, go buy what you need.
Used adjustable shelving pops up all the time, usually at $25 a section.

You can usually buy those 8-ft tall X 4-ft wide. wall gondolas with
pegboard backs and lots of adjustable shelves for small money. 3
sections makes for a LOT of storage.


RoyJ wrote:
I'm with Tom on the parade washout.

Welded shelving frames are not really the way to go, not enough
flexibility down the road. You especially need to be able to adjust the
height so that you can fit some tall item (Christmas ornament) on one
shelf, find some small items to put on the smaller space.

3/8" OSB is a poor choice for a 2' span. It will sag under any kind of
concentrated load. Even some paint cans will do it it. Particle board is
even worse. Th MINIMUM I would use is 1/2" CDX plywood, 5/8" CDX would
be better. 1/2" OSB would be second choice, 5/8" would be better.
Particle board had better be a full 3/4"

The best home shelving is the mini sized pallet racking systems
available at the home stores. You buy end frames in 6' or 8' heights by
18", 24", or some wider sizes. Cross beams come in 4', 6', and 8'. Add
plywood sheving depending on the load you need. The pieces would come
close to your budget amount, these are a really nice way to go.

I have half a dozen standard metal shelving units: 2 piece vertical
posts with holes every inch, 5 stamped metal shelves. Most have 36"x16"
shelves, carry decent loads, are not up to carrying a shelf full of
motors or double stacked gallon paint cans. Haven't priced these lately,
I'd expect to see them for $40 regular, $30 on sale or similar.

Curt Welch wrote:
As part of a project to finish our unfinished basement, I need to create
some storage shelves for all the household crud that has managed to
accumulate in our basement for the past 12 years. I have to pack it
all in
what will be my new shop area to get it out of the way for the
construction
work. My first thought was to quickly hack temp shelves from lumber
which
would be replaced by something more permanent in the storage areas after
the basement project was done. But then one of my friends suggested I
build some metal shelves. This was an exciting idea I hadn't even
thought
of because I could use it as an excuse to buy welding equipment (yeah!),
and not have to waste time and effort building crude wooden shelves that
would be torn down later. I could build decent shelves we would use now,
and them simply relocate as needed to the other part of the basement
after
the construction.

I'd be buying a 220V MIG welder for this (like a Miller 180 auto-set).
It's more than this project needs but I want extra power to grow if I'm
going to buy a welder. So, if you could, give me some input to see if I
can find a way to justify this to my wife!

I have a catch 22 problem where I need a good rough estimate of how much
these will cost before I can justify buying the welder to make them. But
I've never build anything like this so I don't know what size material is
needed, and since I don't have a welder to make some prototypes, I'm
kinda
stuck in the dark.

So, here's what I'm currently thinking. I'm looking at building some
free
standing shelves about 2' by 4' by 6' tall with a welded steel frame
and 5
wood shelves. They will hold mostly light weight loads such as boxes of
Christmas decorations and other home items but must be strong enough so
they can hold heaver loads like boxes of books - at least on two or 3 of
the lower shelves. I'll need about 5 of these units.

Home depot has plastic snap together shelves of this size for about $55
dollars which would probably work, but you can't adjust their shelf
height
and hey, they are plastic. They also have much stronger heavy duty steel
storage shelves of this same size for about $75. They too are
snap-together but have two adjustable height shelves and 3 fixed position
shelves with I think 3/8" particle board shelves.

I probably won't be able to talk the wife into letting me do this
unless I
can come up with a design where the materials are less than the cost
of the
heavy duty Home Depot shelves, or the design offers features that justify
the extra cost. The $1000 dollars I'll end up spending on new toys
for me
and all the time I'll waste building them doesn't have to factor in to
the
equation. Part of how that would be justified is that with the
equipment,
I could build more projects in the future that would eventually over time
justify the cost. But if I spend all the money on tools just so I can
build
shelves that cost more and aren't as good as what we can buy out of
the box
from Home Depot, then the argument really falls apart. It might
simply be
the case that you can't build it yourself for less than the mass produced
shelves. I hope that's not true.

The obvious options I see is to build it with square tubing or angle
iron.
The one design I've priced so far uses 1" square (.065 thick) vertical
corner supports, and 1/4" square (also 065) cross members to hold the
shelves. The cheapest shelving material I could find that seems like it
would be strong enough is 3/8" OSB for $6.94 per 8'x4' panel.

That configuration will cost me about $71 per unit for the metal, and
$8.50
for the wood. Then maybe another $10 to paint the shelf plus some add
some
bolts for the feet so I can level the units. So this design is around
$90
per shelving unit. (welding supplies like wire and gas we can just ignore
as well).

So I'm looking at basic materials for $90 compared to the $75 very heavy
duty home depot shelving unit out of the box. Not a very compelling
argument yet.

One question for the group - how strong would shelves built out of these
materials be? It will be MIG welded into a solid unit. Assume I can
weld
(whether it's true or not). The OSB shelves would just rest in place and
have their corners cut out so they can't slide out. They are
supported on
all 4 edges by the 1/4" square tubing. For extra strength, I could
easily
screw them to the cross members if it was needed. Or for not much more
money, I could put an extra 1/4" square tube cross member in the
middle of
each shelf if it was needed. Anyone ever work with this size material
with
a design anything like this who could give me a gut feeling about how
strong these shelves would be? Could I for example stand on them (I way
near 200 lbs) without damaging them?

And another question, would a welded design like this be strong enough to
support the typical lateral stresses a shelf unit might see without
having
to add cross bracing? Or if cross bracing was needed, how much might be
needed? The $90 cost includes no material for cross bracing (but I do
have
a ton of 1/8" rod from political signs I took down which I could create
cross bracing with for free). Using extra 1/4" for some diagonal cross
bracing on say the bottom shelf only wouldn't cost too much but would
probably push the material cost near $100.

Or is this size square tubing too small for trying to build a medium duty
storage shelve so I would need to spend more to go to 1" all around, or
1.5" vertical with 1" cross members? I don't want to over engineer
and end
up with shelves that cost more than they need to or weigh a lot more than
they need to making them a bitch to move.

The other option I haven't looked into (cost wise) is to use angle iron
instead of square tubing. Angle iron seems to be common in welded frame
designs but seems to me it would have to be larger for the same strength
and not cost any less in the end. Any one have ideas one what size angle
iron would be needed for a project like this either for the cross members
to hold the shelves or for both the cross members and the vertical corner
pieces? I could try pricing that as well to see how it works out with my
local supplier.

One advantage I see to making these welded shelves is that they should be
solid enough to move even when they are loaded. I'm thinking of building
some type of caster based jack I could slide under and lift the shelf and
move it even when it was loaded. Trying to do this with the somewhat
unstable snap-together store bought units would be a bit risky. You
can't
for example pull up on a shelf to lift it because the shelf could pop out
and end up with the entire unit falling apart on you. The welded units
should allow us to move them from the temp location to their final
location
without totally unloading them - and move them later if we want to
rearrange storage without having to totally unload the shelves before
moving them.

Another advantage is that this square tubing design will have much thiner
vertical profile for each shelf (a bit over 1" per shelf) allowing for
taller boxes per shelf and less dead space. The HD heavy duty shelves
have
a profile of about 3" per shelf.

Yet another advantage of course is that I can build the shelf heights to
exactly what I need to fit the types of boxes we have to store (we have a
lot of similar sized plastic bins for example - which will help maximize
the storage density.

These advantages might help justify the higher cost of these shelves
to the
wife.

Anyone got any other ideas of how a custom welded storage shelves
could be
an advantage to help me justify getting a welder?

I'm just looking for any gut instincts you guys might have on this design
or alternate designs that could work and might be cheaper and/or better.

Thanks - with the right answers, I might get a new toy this week and
have a
fun welding project to look forward to!