A while back I mentioned that we were fortunate enough to purchase, at a very reasonable price, a large lot of Bullseye COE 90 sheet glass from a local business. As you would expect, our immediate problem was where to store it all.
You can see in this photo how we chose to purchase a set of shelving along with a number of large plastic containers. Well, the shelving is fine, but the plastic containers were a bad mistake.
The containers were necessarily large to accommodate the size of the sheets we purchased, but their size made handling an issue. To lift them on and off the shelves was a challenge unless we reduced the number of sheets to a point where they were mostly empty. It was necessary to lift them off the shelf each time because they were top loading.
The worst problem was that the weight of the sheets leaning against the sides of the containers caused them to flex when you lifted them. This then flexed glass each time you lifted the container. The inevitable did happen a couple of times – the sheets broke.
I knew we had to find a better solution. The obvious was to build a rack that was very sturdy, no flexing, where we could easily see just what stock we had and was front loading. I could make it, but time was just not going to allow that to happen.
So off to a local cabinet maker with a sketch of what we needed. Surprisingly, the cost wasn’t too bad and in a little over a week the rack was ready.
You can see in this photo how we solved the problem. The rack units slotted into our shelving perfectly (so I measured well).
We have grouped our glass into transparent, opalescent and streaky. Within each group we have sorted the sheets by Bullseye product codes. Some 2 colour and 3 colour streaky were given their own slot in the racks, as was the clear.
I am extremely happy with the solution. It is now very easy to see just what glass we have. All sheets are facing the same way and we have ensured the Bullseye product code is visible. The sheets slide in and out of the rack easily and safely.
My advice to anyone with a reasonable quantity of glass is to invest in a good rack system. It will save you from the heartache of seeing an expensive sheet of beautiful glass in multiple pieces.
I like that the dividers are white – the glass colors show up great! What spacing did you use between each divider? It looks like a good spacing for a lot of glass.
Hi cmartccokie. It is built from 16mm whiteboard. The back is also 16mm to give rigidity and strength. Internal space dimensions are 160mm wide, 535 mm high and 600 mm deep. I designed it to fit the rack so overall width, height etc was fixed, and worked out fine for half sheets. The internal width I tried a few mock ups to see about how much I could put in a slot without it becoming difficult to locate a piece etc. It is still working great and very happy with it. It is a lot fuller now, of course, and the only breakages are from me stuffing up in other ways:)
Thank you – that’s very helpful! Very much appreciate it!