Free has a quality all its own, but sometimes allowances must be made.
There was an earth-shattering crash from the vicinity of my powershed this afternoon, and I found all the canned goods not already in the cabin scattered all over the damn place.
When I picked up everything I could see, I was clearly missing quite a lot. So I had to move the kerosene and some heavy ammo crates from the very bottom shelf, and there was the rest.
Once I got the shelf itself yanked out from where it was jammed, it seemed perfectly fine. Seems the supports just separated under the weight. Bother.
Fortunately I keep a roll of mechanic’s wire around for just such emergencies…
Wrapped it in three places, as tight as I could without snapping the wire. Which happened once anyway…
Jiggety jig.
If you dare to think outside the box, (a skill that I learned the rudiments of far too late) you can use WOOD to reinforce METAL shelves, or vice versa.
I put metal store shelving up using 2×4 uprights, because I didn’t have the right metal ones.
Bolting shelves to the wall, or hanging from the joists with plumbers tape, keeps them from falling over.
Assembling the shelves sort-of upside down gives you a shelf with a rim, so stuff doesn’t fall off so easily.
Reinforcing the uprights with a 1/4 inch plywood panel is probably overkill, unless you put your ammo on the TOP shelf, but it would never sway again.
wiring or strapping an X from the uprights on one side to the other and/or front to back is also a good way to make shelves more rigid so they will sway less.
triangles are rigid, while rectangles are wobbly.
Had several sets of similar shelves for my. Office. Assembled,one set, threw them out along with the rest.
We have used various shelving for storing our home-canned foodstuffs. Quart jars full of essentially liquids with some solids mixed in are HEAVY, a quart Mason jar of green beans weighing right at three pounds. Two dozen of these puts over seventy pounds on each shelf. Therefore, no surprise at seeing shelves droop at the center, sometimes quite severely.
We resolved this by inserting a “riser” right at mid-shelf consisting of a piece of lumber cut to the exact length allowing it to be wedged into place vertically between two shelves in the manner of placing a book onto a shelf. This carries the center load to the shelf beneath, and the bottom shelf is supported on the floor by whatever it takes to just fit between its underside and the floor.
This approach has allowed us to successfully use some of the lesser-expensive plastic “modular” shelving we find on sale at various big box stores. Also works for any other shelving you can come up with. Strong suggestion: tie the shelving stack to the wall behind it near the top. Don’t ask . . .
😉