In my 5 years of brewing I have a accumulated something close to 700 bottles of beer. Storing this much beer poses a real challenge as, if you want it to be reasonably accessible, you end up having fairly short stacks of cases. Our house has a nice small, dark, and cool basement room which I've used for storage of much of my beer equipment but, given this much beer, I've ended up spreading out into most of the basement.
In order to more efficiently store the beer I have designed some large capacity beer shelving units which are capable of storing 160 12 oz bottles. These are capable of holding long necks, short stubby bottles, or 16 oz bottles (like those Russian River bottles with).
These are approximately 20 inches Tall x 27 inches long x 24 inches wide. I have a 72 inch wide
heavy duty shelving unit which can hold 3 of these racks on each row. I ended up building 6 of these these which fit on the bottom two rows.
Some design choice notes:
- I built these using melamine covered particle board. This is a strong and easy to work with wood. The melamine is a smooth coating that gives the particle board some protection from moisture damage.
- I sealed the edges with a Primer/Sealer to further prevent moisture damage.
- The edges of melamine can be very sharp so I used a 1/8th inch round over router bit to smooth the edges
- The racks are sloped to encourage bottles to slide to the bottom. I found that a 9 degree slope is sufficient to cause either an empty or full bottle slide slowly to the bottom without falling.
- I am using glue to connect all the pieces and then metal braces and screws for additional support. I found that using rabbit and dado cuts for the joints really helped with the assembly compared with just attempting do everything with butt joints with screws. The benefits justified the additional work.
- I decided to setup dividers to keep beers in racks of two each. This makes it easier to load them as the bottles aren't being pushed far out of their row. I found that a 5.25 inch gap is sufficient to store two short stubby (Sierra Nevada or Lagunitas) bottles next to each other. 6 of the 8 rows are this width. One of the rows is 5.5 inches which is sufficient to store two Russian River bottles side by side
- I added handles, which weren't in the design, to aid in carrying an empty rack to the shelving. Trying to pick up one of these with any beer in it would be a major mistake.
- Bottom rack sticks out further than the upper rack so that bottom bottles can be pulled straight out
Parts List:
Cut List:
- From the first Melamine board we'll get one side and the top shelf:
- From the second Melamine board we'll get the second side and the bottom shelf:
- From the third Melamine board we'll get the cross pieces and the side braces (will have a 30 in of board left over):
- From the MDF we'll get the dividers:
The Build:
- I first cut the side pieces
- I measure out and then cut the side pieces out of the board. I use a circular saw with a guide to cut straight lines
- I cut handles into the side pieces to aid in moving the shelves. I use a pattern that I cut using a hole saw and then I can that into the sides by first using a drill to remove as much wood as possible from the interior and then a router with a pattern bit
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| Handle Template |
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| Drilling out interior (did sort of a crappy job and left a log of cleanup for the router) |
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| Pattern bit - guide wheels are at the bottom so I have put the template on the bottom of the work piece while cutting |
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| Cutting to the pattern |
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| Results - didn't do that clean a job. Will also consider moving the handle a bit next time |
- I cut the dado into the side pieces. This will be a slot for the shelves.
- I first cut the top and bottom lines with the circular saw and guides
- To bore out the wood in the middle to the 1/4 inch depth I tried with both a router with a pattern bit and with the circular saw and chisel. Circular saw with chisel is the faster way to do it I think.
- I then work on the side braces
- First I cut 4 2 inch strips. I use the table saw for this operation
- The side pieces each get a 5/8th inch wide rabbit at a 1/4 inch depth
- I cut the rabbits using a table saw. Having the 4 strips means that I can setup the table saw blade depths once and then cut the rabbit for all eight pieces at once. A couple pieces will be very short (1 3/4 in) so cutting the rabbit after the pieces have been milled to their final length would be somewhat dangerous
- First I find the cut 5/8th of an inch into the board at a depth of 1/4 in. I use the table saw miter gauge and fence to dial this in and make a repeatable cut
- Then I cut out the rabbit by cutting the 5/8th of an inch depth 1/4 into the board in the vertical direction
- I then cut the side braces out (2 at 1 3/4, 4 at 4 1/4, and 2 at 5 1/4 inches)
- I then attached the side braces to the sides
- Measured the bottom of the side braces 2 3/4 in up from the bottom of the track
- I'll be securing these with dowel pins and glue
- Lined up the side and the brace and made a mark for the first dowel pin
- Drilled two holes for each brace using a dowel jig
- Glued and clamped the braces to the side
- Once the glue dries I apply a 1/8th inch radius round over to all edges of the sides except the rabbits and dado. A router is used to do this
- I then apply white primer/sealer to all exposed particle board
- I then cut the shelf pieces
- I used my circular saw to cut to length
- Then I used my table saw to cut to width
- I then round over the edges
- Next I paint the particle board with the sealer
- I then cut out the cross pieces
- Cut 2 inch strips of roughly 24 inches length using the table saw
- Cut them to the correct length - 22.5 inches (exactly the same width as the shelf pieces)
- Applied a 1/8th inch round over with my router to the long edged (short edges not included in this). We cut the round over at this point so that we don't have to deal with the slots
- Cut a rabbit into both ends of the pieces 1/8th in deep and 1/4 inch wide. I dial in the depth and the furthest inward location and then reduce the distance to chuck out the wood. Checked my work on the side braces as I went.
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| This shows the dry fit of the connection between cross piece and side brace |
- Cut the slots for the dividers. I will be gluing these in but I'd also like them tight enough to stay put on their own. I sneak up on the cut to get the perfect width
- I first cut to two outside slots which are 5 1/2 inches from the ends (this includes the 1/4 inch rabbit
- I next cut the middle piece which is 11 1/4 inch from one of the sides
- I then paint these pieces
- I then start assembly of the rack. There are many ways to do this and I tried several. The way I outline below was the easiest of the methods but was still a bit of a pain
- Installed mending plates across the joints between side and side brace pieces. This is just a bit of extra support as I don't really trust the glue or dowels into this particle board. The smallest of the side braces doesn't get a mending plate as the corner brace will span the joint
- Then I installed the cross pieces with the rack laying on its side. I glued and then clamped them in place and used a framing square to ensure they were clamped properly. This required a little adjustment but, for the most part, the rabbit joints held the pieces roughly square. I let this dry over night.
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| Cross pieces being clamped |
- I then applied glue to the two bottom pieces, the other side piece, and the remaining end of the cross pieces and then clamped this all together. Let this dry over night
- I waited until after the assembly had completed on my final version to install corner braces on the the joints between side brace and cross pieces. The cross piece are difficult to screw in precisely and, if not done right, could pull things out of square. Gluing the pieces first while ensuring that everything is square and then installing the braces afterwards as extra support seemed like the best approach.
- Finally, I installed corner braces on the bottom pieces
- I then make the dividers
- First cut 2 inch strips out of the MDF
- Then cut these down to length. I try to get it as close to possible in length for each slot so that they fit very tight.
- I apply a small amount of glue to the pieces to secure them in the slots. Depending on how close you got to the right size it may take some encouragement to get these down into the slots - a rubber mallet helps. Tighter is better.
Lessons Learned:
- The cross support pieces are pretty fragile before adding the divider pieces. I ended up cracking a couple during movement of the mostly assembled rack. I applied mending plates over the crack and was able to salvage both pieces.
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