Upper Cabinets - When to place a fixed shelf

[Glen Blanchard]

I am mostly done with a nice, large (for me anyway) 64" x 40" outfeed /assembly table. The top is a torsion box and there is one cabinet and two banks of drawers underneath. What a pleasure it is having that kind of real estate for an outfeed table. I have lived without an outfeed table of any kind now for 10 years, but now that we have moved into our new house and I now have a dedicated 2.5 car garage in which to make my sawdust, this was the first order of business. Woodpecker recently had a bulk sale on full extension drawer slides, and they won't ship until late next week, so I have gone as far as I can go with the outfeed table. The drawers will have to wait a while.

Now onto other pressing matters for the shop. My next step will be to make upper cabinets. These will be frameless and I am planning on them being 36" wide x 36" tall x either 14" or 16" deep (trying to decide). My question is regarding a fixed shelf. I will have a couple of adjustable shelves I suppose, but should I have a fixed shelf (for rigidity) half way up in a 36" tall upper? I plan on placing a 3/4" back panel to these and will hang them on the wall with french cleats, but there will be no face-frame.

Thanks again for all the help y'all!

[John Lanciani]

Hi Glen,

As far as fixed shelves, I don't put one in unless the cabinet is 48" or so tall, and then I put it in the middle. a fixed shelf in a 36" cabinet really limits the usability of any other adjustable shelves. On another note, you may want to change the size of your cabinets to 32" tall by 24" wide by either 12" or 16" deep; you'll have much less wasted material and you won't need to worry about the 36" wide shelves sagging. Try sketching out your plywood cuts and you'll see what I mean.

John

[Kent A Bathurst]

.....you won't need to worry about the 36" wide shelves sagging.....

http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm

Also - my personal exerience has been that the adjustable shelves quickly find a "home" position and never move after that. SO I don't fool with 'em anymore - the fixed shelves are faster to install.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Glenn,

I have two hanging wall cabinets in my shop.

One is 49" w x 38" tall and 16" deep. There is adjustable shelves in this cabinet. It has no internal frame but does have a face frame. The top and sides are 3/4" AC plywood with 1/2" CDX plywood for the back. The back is instaled in a 1/2" dado inset by 3/4". I used a 3/4" thick french cleat at the top to hang it and a 3/4" filler near the bottom. I screwed through the filler into studs to insure that it couldn't come off the french cleat accidentally. By using an inset, the sides and top are flush with the wall and it prevents "stuff" from falling behind the cabinet as I store "stuff" on top the cabinet. One could build them without the inset and still use the french cleat method or just screw them to the wall without a french cleat.

My other cabinet is somewhat taller but it does have a permanent shelf. I wasn't worried about cabinet's stability but I was concerned about hanging doors of rabbeted plywood and their stability over time. So, I elected to put in a permanent shelf and on the face frame, I framed that portion as a separate portion and thus used 4 doors (2 shorter ones...2 longers ones) rather than 2 really long doors. I hope this is making sense.

[Paul Johnstone]

I make most of my shelves fixed, not adjustable.. It's just a preference of mine. I've found that in our house, once the shelves are initially "adjusted", they never move.

It definitely makes the cabinet more rigid. Is it absolutely necessary.. not really.

Instead of putting a fixed shelf in the middle, maybe you want to put a fixed shelf 8-12" below the top or above the bottom. (depending on what you are going to store there).

[Callan Campbell]

http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm

Also - my personal exerience has been that the adjustable shelves quickly find a "home" position and never move after that. SO I don't fool with 'em anymore - the fixed shelves are faster to install.
Kent beat me to it. Once you load up with stuff, that shelf is now permanent unless you are of the mindset to reorganize every so often.:p

[Bill Huber]

This is not the answer to your question but it is a comment on shelves.

I have found that I don't want any shelves in the shop, I want drawers or closed cabinets, as few open shelves as possible. Even with the best DC that is still some dust that gets out and there is just plan dust in the air.

It is so nice not to have saw dust on everything in the shop. I still have one set of steel shelves that I am going to replace with 2 cabinets and a drawer unit.

[Van Huskey]

I make most of my shelves fixed, not adjustable.. It's just a preference of mine. I've found that in our house, once the shelves are initially "adjusted", they never move.

It definitely makes the cabinet more rigid. Is it absolutely necessary.. not really.

Instead of putting a fixed shelf in the middle, maybe you want to put a fixed shelf 8-12" below the top or above the bottom. (depending on what you are going to store there).

I tend to be the same way, I used to fret that I wouldn't forsee what would actually end up in the cabinets, now I have learned I am right 90+% of the time. I also love to build with fixed shelves it makes the end poduct feel like it is carved from granite, overbuilt sure but works for me and takes less time and/or money in the end.

[Prashun Patel]

To answer yr original question: IMHO, you don't NEED a fixed shelf. 36x36 will be fine with 3/4" plywood as long as the top and bottoms are cleated. I only know this bkz that's exactly how big mine are.

Personally, I like adjustable shelves because then I don't have to be persnickety about designing each unit and predicting how I'll use it. Once I find a configuration I like, it tends to stay that way for years, but getting there takes some jimmyjacking initially. I like to do it live instead of on paper.

Especially if you have a pin drilling jig like the Rockler one, it's easy to drill the holes.