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offcntrRound about sixteen years ago, when I started making the family room of our new-mortgaged house into a pottery studio, I knew I needed a big shelving unit, something I could slide ware boards of freshly-thrown or trimmed or drying pots on and off of easily. My studio down at Club Mud had a system made of two-by-four uprights and pipe cross-members, simple, flexible and easy to duplicate. Or so I thought.
Almost immediately, I got it wrong.
I put the back set of uprights right against the wall, for stability. Front set about forty-four inches out, nearly to the other end of the four-foot ware boards. Used scaffolding pipe I bought on the cheap from BRING Recycling. It worked. Sort of.
The problem is balance. When you slide a ware board onto the rack, it goes in easily until just past half-way, then the front end starts to droop, more and more the further in it gets. Since the back pipe support was on the back wall, it took superhuman strength to keep the shelf from crashing down on the pots below it before it reached the next support. Clearly, a solution was needed.
At the time, I had a surplus of ware boards. I'd bought a bunch from a potter who was closing shop, so I could just leave a set permanently mounted on the rack, slide the full boards in on top. Sure I lost 3/4" of height on each level, but I could live with that. And it's not like I'd ever run out of boards, right?
Fast forward a few years. Suddenly, I've got three galleries, eight road shows, and Saturday Market is doing unexpectedly well. I'm running out of ware space, I'm running out of ware boards, I have to do something. I briefly consider replacing the base set of boards with something thinner, like 1/4" paneling, but that just seems like a Panda's Thumb solution.
(For those of you who aren't natural history geeks like me, The Panda's Thumb is an essay and book by Stephen Jay Gould that tells how evolution jury-rigs solutions to problems. The panda was a bear that had become strictly herbivorous, and needed the dexterity to strip bamboo shoots from stems so it could concentrate on the high-nutrition bits and toss the chaff. A thumb would be a wonderful help, but unfortunately, the toe that developed into a thumb in primates (and us) was already in use as a toe in the panda's bear feet. Since evolution doesn't go backwards, they evolved a thumb-like appendage from an oversize wrist bone. It works, but it's limited. Kinda like my shelving system.)
Fortunately, I can reverse course. My initial plan was to leave the back uprights in place, for stability, install a new set ten inches back from the front ones, then move them to the back, ten inches from the wall. This would mean no ware board would need support more than 28 inches before the next cross-pipe caught it, and I'd only have to buy hardware and two-by-fours for one more set of uprights.
The more I looked at the existing ones, though, the less I liked the spacing. I'd originally placed holes 5" apart, on center, but never actually used every set, because inch-and-a-half of shelf. With pipes in every other set of holes, my basic space was 10" high. If I only needed one shelf, though, I could use the closer spacing and get twice as many dinner plates, desserts, or pie dishes. With an extra inch, though, I could fit soup bowls. And I throw a lot of soup bowls.
So I went back to Jerry's for two more uprights. Drilled 32 inch-and-a-quarter holes, inhaling copious amounts of sawdust. Installed new uprights, dis-installed old ones, reusing the lag screws. (The photo shows the halfway point. Lighter colored 2x4's are the new set, darker colored ones the old.) Moved pipes into their new places, shifted shelves around, dusted, cleared fifteen years of detritus, and guess what? I have a storage system that works.
Also? Sixteen extra ware boards.
If only I'd done this sixteen years ago.
Almost immediately, I got it wrong.
I put the back set of uprights right against the wall, for stability. Front set about forty-four inches out, nearly to the other end of the four-foot ware boards. Used scaffolding pipe I bought on the cheap from BRING Recycling. It worked. Sort of.
The problem is balance. When you slide a ware board onto the rack, it goes in easily until just past half-way, then the front end starts to droop, more and more the further in it gets. Since the back pipe support was on the back wall, it took superhuman strength to keep the shelf from crashing down on the pots below it before it reached the next support. Clearly, a solution was needed.
At the time, I had a surplus of ware boards. I'd bought a bunch from a potter who was closing shop, so I could just leave a set permanently mounted on the rack, slide the full boards in on top. Sure I lost 3/4" of height on each level, but I could live with that. And it's not like I'd ever run out of boards, right?
Fast forward a few years. Suddenly, I've got three galleries, eight road shows, and Saturday Market is doing unexpectedly well. I'm running out of ware space, I'm running out of ware boards, I have to do something. I briefly consider replacing the base set of boards with something thinner, like 1/4" paneling, but that just seems like a Panda's Thumb solution.
(For those of you who aren't natural history geeks like me, The Panda's Thumb is an essay and book by Stephen Jay Gould that tells how evolution jury-rigs solutions to problems. The panda was a bear that had become strictly herbivorous, and needed the dexterity to strip bamboo shoots from stems so it could concentrate on the high-nutrition bits and toss the chaff. A thumb would be a wonderful help, but unfortunately, the toe that developed into a thumb in primates (and us) was already in use as a toe in the panda's bear feet. Since evolution doesn't go backwards, they evolved a thumb-like appendage from an oversize wrist bone. It works, but it's limited. Kinda like my shelving system.)
Fortunately, I can reverse course. My initial plan was to leave the back uprights in place, for stability, install a new set ten inches back from the front ones, then move them to the back, ten inches from the wall. This would mean no ware board would need support more than 28 inches before the next cross-pipe caught it, and I'd only have to buy hardware and two-by-fours for one more set of uprights.
The more I looked at the existing ones, though, the less I liked the spacing. I'd originally placed holes 5" apart, on center, but never actually used every set, because inch-and-a-half of shelf. With pipes in every other set of holes, my basic space was 10" high. If I only needed one shelf, though, I could use the closer spacing and get twice as many dinner plates, desserts, or pie dishes. With an extra inch, though, I could fit soup bowls. And I throw a lot of soup bowls.
So I went back to Jerry's for two more uprights. Drilled 32 inch-and-a-quarter holes, inhaling copious amounts of sawdust. Installed new uprights, dis-installed old ones, reusing the lag screws. (The photo shows the halfway point. Lighter colored 2x4's are the new set, darker colored ones the old.) Moved pipes into their new places, shifted shelves around, dusted, cleared fifteen years of detritus, and guess what? I have a storage system that works.
Also? Sixteen extra ware boards.
If only I'd done this sixteen years ago.