Utility shelves from recycled plywood

Recently I was faced with having to haul away an immense pile of debris from tearing down an old, decrepit garage. At the same time, I needed to put up a lot of shelving in the new garage without spending a lot of money. I figured out a way to save both some of the haulaway cost of the debris and the cost of new shelving material by re-using some of the badly-weathered plywood wall and roof sheathing from the old garage as shelving boards. The trick to turning the ratty, thin (1/2" thick) plywood into strong, custom-sized shelving is to laminate two layers together with construction glue. Here are a few tricks I learned in the process.

Step 1 Define your project

There are a few things to consider when planning your shelf project. It's important to make sure you have enough material to do the job. Although 1/2" thick material is the most common and usable for this, many other configurations are possible. Two layers of half-inch yield a nice, sturdy 1" thick shelf that spans 32" (two studs) with a reasonable load capacity. You can also laminate either 2 or 3 layers of 3/8" plywood, depending on span.
Another nice thing about this technique is that finished shelf size is almost unlimited. Shown here is a set of 14 foot shelves I put together earlier from 2 layers of 1/2" scrap plywood. The one-piece boards span 32" between supports and, as you see, can carry a lot of stuff.
The raw material I used would have been thrown away by a sane person. Cracks, splits, warps, nail holes, surface deterioration: it's all good. As long as it's not rotted and has some structural integrity left, it'll work OK. Figure out how much usable area you can get out of your stash, keeping in mind you'll be cutting it into strips the width of your finished shelves, and that you'll need twice the area to start with (assuming 2-ply lamination). Also plan on cutting with, rather than across, the surface grain for maximum strength.

Comments

[I am in the shed!]

Well done, and if you got rid of that big white bulky thing with wheels you could have loads more useful storage space, People always seem to put these things in thier garage... it should not be allowed ;)

[rimar2000]

Good work, but a suggestion: These brackets should be placed upside down. Just as they are, they don't bear much weight. (Esas ménsulas deberían estar colocadas al revés. Así como están no soportan mucho peso).

[dpocius]

An interesting thought. That would put the diagonals under tension rather than compression, which is a good thing. But, the load would be borne by the screws that fasten the bracket to the shelf (pullout strength of the screws), unless the shelf were on the other side of the horizontal element, and the way it's stamped makes this inconvenient if not impossible. I suppose the boards could be cross-grooved to clear the stiffening bump on the underside of the horizontal. All I can say is I'm using the brackets in the manner that they were intended, and I've had excellent results over the years with several installations. Take a look at the pictures of the 14 foot set. That's not potato chips and feathers I have packed in there! Now if the manufacturer were to re-do the stamping so they would be used as you suggest, that would increase the load-carrying capacity tremendously. Then I could store my anvil collection on them! I've seen other shelf brackets that work like you suggest, but I can't remember where.

[rimar2000]

As well as to groove the shelves, you can replace the screws by screws + washers + nuts, and leave the boards below the brackets. That is, tie up the whole. These brackets seem enough strong to work as you use them.