48" shelf?

[Jim Murphy]

Take a look-see at the cabinet/work area/shelf to the right of the router table.

The lower shelf is a nice place to store materials, but leaves a lot of wasted space above (that is, if you load it up, it would take an hour to remove the stuff to get to what you wanted, which is ALWAYS on the bottom of the pile.)

So I'm thinking of putting in a couple of 2X supports midway up, at each end, and putting in heavy-duty bottom mount sliders with a 2X4 melamine panel on top, a sliding shelf of sorts.

For those of you who are DAMHIKT qualified, will the 3/4" melamine spanning 48" and supported only on the ends by the slides have the necessary strength to support various "things"? I'm not planning to store bags of sacrete or anything like that. I'm thinking things like router table sleds and jigs, box joint jigs, sacrificial fence, taper jig, EB3... stuff that needs a place to live when not needed on the saw or RT but won't fit in the beautiful, custom made, perfectly matched with PM gold paint drawers and nifty chrome pulls that I recently built.

 

[skysharks]

You might be ok. But I would think that you'll get some defliction over time, unless you framed it up underneath with additional support. Maybe with a carrier runner with a bearing run half way or something.
Why not 2 sliding shelfs. Do you have to keep the bottom open or something?

just m2cw.

 

[sediener]

I would edge the front and back with 2" pieces of wood to add stability or make a 2" deep drawer. It might be fine for light things without reinforcement but would probably sag in the middle. Since the ends will be attached to slides I wouldn't want it sagging and putting racking pressure on the slides.

- Steve

 

[Bas]

The Sagulator will give you the answer -> http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm
My gut feeling is no, you need to add some edging or extra support. But, it all depends on what you're putting on the shelf. If it's a couple of boxes of screws and spare rolls of paper towels, no problem. Your entire router collection - maybe not.

 

[TBone]

I would either edge it with hardwood, run a support across the back of the cabinet or build a drawer. A 48" shelf can hold a lot of items and I think the accumulated weight will cause deflection without additional support.

 

[Bigdog72]

My experience has been that melamine will sag with no load at all given enough time. Definetely need to edge or put a two x on edge at mid span.

 

[Steve W]

I tend to agree with Geoff on this one. Melamine/MDF/particle board all will sag in the middle, given sufficient time, if not supported in some other way -- even with nothing on the shelf at all.

My $0.02

:kermit: Steve

 

[JimmyC]

From my experiences (and I have a few 3' shelves sagging in the shop now) I would reiterate the point that Mac made on using either a shelf support infrastructure, or if possible making them into 2' shelves. I do like the idea of using the sliders in the shop.

Jimmy

 

[Keye]

Hey Bas, thanks for the sagulator. I was about to post a question about sag on a cherry shelf. Based on the sagulator I am going to be at .012" per foot which should not be problem based on the lenght of my shelf.

 

[Gotcha6]

Cabinet makers we use @ work usually stay <32" on melaline spans carrying files, etc. FWIW.