USEFUL AROUND THE HOUSE: DISPLAY SHELF UNIT

Bolts, nuts, washers, cotter pins, and other small items are necessary in any household. Or, say, jars and bottles with spices, seeds, chemical reagents… It’s good when all of this is not in “working disorder,” but at hand, in a homemade glass storage rack, the square cells of which are quite capacious and compact.

The construction of such storage, which is also an effective display case, is modular. It is based on glass facing tiles measuring 150x150x3 mm. It is advisable to use ready-made ones, so as not to waste time and effort on cutting more than half a hundred neat squares from capricious window glass.

Every four adjacent tiles (a pair of vertical and horizontal) are fastened to each other using two crosspieces cut from 3-mm duralumin sheet scraps and having grooves at the corners measuring 10×3.5 mm. As a result, 35 cells appear, inserted into a common rectangular frame made of birch or spruce timber with a cross-section of 50×20 mm, in which slots are prudently made to a depth of approximately 17 mm. Fastening — with PVA glue with subsequent reinforcement of corners with screws.

Such a rack is suspended on two hooks made of steel strip 20 mm wide, fitted onto wall-embedded, slightly curved brackets made of steel rod with a diameter of 10 mm. In the straightened part of each hook, a pair of holes are drilled for countersunk head screws — for reliable attachment to the frame.

Other mounting options are also possible. Both to the wall, and to entrance doors or furniture doors. The dimensions of the rack (the number of cells in a row and column) can be any and should correspond to the installation location.

It is convenient to assemble the rack on the floor. The side in contact with it will be the front side (the edges of the tiles lie in one plane, which cannot be said about the opposite side, if the glass squares are cut with a large tolerance). Four tiles, held by hand perpendicular to the floor and to each other, are fitted with a mounting crosspiece so that the glass edges enter the slots intended for them.

For the crosspieces to hold on the glass, their temporary fixation with plasticine is necessary. It is more convenient to use plasticine in the form of mounting corners from pre-rolled balls, which are flattened and then cut into four parts. Parts fixed by these corners do not fall apart even after they are no longer supported by hand. Especially if the glass tiles are selected to be the same, so that the edges are arranged in a line.

When the glass part is assembled, the tiles are more carefully aligned. Then epoxy resin is applied to the crosspieces, which fills the gaps but does not run down the glass, as plasticine prevents this. After the epoxy resin dries, the rack is inserted into the frame, where holes for screws are already drilled and slots are cut for the ends of the glass tiles. PVA glue is applied to the contact points of the elements of the almost finished product with each other and all revealed gaps are filled.

Next comes another drying, after which the rack is turned over, the plasticine is removed, and epoxy resin is poured onto the crosspieces instead. When the glue polymerizes, the wooden frame should be painted, dried, and the hooks should also be secured with screws. The rack is ready for installation on the wall.

Of course, similar racks can also be made without a wooden frame when placed in niches and cabinets. However, it cannot be ignored that their load capacity is somewhat lower. But these racks look original and beautiful in their own way. Especially if the back wall of the niche or cabinet, in which the glass rack is placed, is mirrored.

V. SOLONIN, Konotop, Ukraine