Adjustable shelf design

[B3nder]

Just finishing a shelving unit in an alcove.

Whilst some of the heights of the shlves are fixed. There is a large space where I am not sure the height between shelves or how many are going to be fitted.

So I remeber seeing a sort of saw tooth piece of wood on each sode thst will allow shelves to be easily added and removed.

Which has lead to a few quesions:

What is this saw tooth type arrangement called?

Any suggestions on the depth of the teeth and the depth of the shelf (thus trying to avoid trial and error!)

Cheers.

 

[B3nder]

Just found this thread:

adjustable-shelves-t74062.html

Exactly the thing im looking to do.

Would i be correct in thinking its the same saw tooth at the back?

 

[MikeG.]

There's a trick to those toothed arrangments. You have to prevent the bearer toppling over inwards, and the easiest way is to embed a small dowel in the underside of the shelf, maybe only 6mm long (below the shelf), which meets an oversized hole in the top of the bearer. That way, once the shelf is in place, nothing can move. I made dozens of these things when I built my kitchen a couple of years ago.

 

[DTR]

I used the sawtooth method on our alcove bookcases. I didn't have any problems with the bearers toppling, but once the shelves were in place I did insert a screw to make sure.

 

[B3nder]

Thanks for the replies.


I have an idea so will get to work.

 

[AndyT]

Just for the record, the supports on mine don't have any dowels or screws. As it was made without any jigs, there's a bit of variation in the length of each space, so the supports would have been individually trimmed to fit their spaces snugly.
That's ok in a design like this where the spacing never gets changed after it's been set up.

 

[Jacob]

I really like those simple trad shelf fixings - sawtooth, dowels etc, not least because they are dirt cheap. Also highly effective - I'v got ancient bookshelves done both ways and heavily laden for many years. A panel pin might be enough to stop the saw tooth bearer from falling over but once under load they are pretty well fixed.