Ikea Kallax for storage

[Chris152]

Boxes of bits have been building up in the workshop so I started looking around for alternatives and found this



used for just £40. It's about 1.8m x 1.8m and great for organising stuff. They seem to come up a lot on the used sites for relatively little money.
And now we have much more space in the workshop - bit of a revelation for me , maybe of interest to others?

 

[Spectric]

And now we have much more space in the workshop

Not a bad size being 6ft by 6ft and for £40 you could not buy the materials to make it but how is it assembled, will it take any weight. The other option that will take weight is these self assembly racking units from the likes of Homebase or https://www.tufferman.co.uk/collections/garage-shelving

 

[Chris152]

Definitely for lighter stuff, tho we do have some heavier bits on the bottom shelf. The shelves are held by dowels, but of course the verticals transfer weight to the bottom. For heavier, the ones you linked to look really good for the money, we'll bear that in mind for the future.

 

[Spectric]

The strength of the dowels is good but as I have found out once you put to much weight on a shelf made from MDF or chipboard and held in place with dowels then the shelf can split around the dowel and is why a lot of shelves sit on pins as those materials are good in compression. This I would suggest is still an issue if using oblong dowels and a Domino but what about the Lamello P2 apart from needing a mortgage to buy and the expensive connectors ?

I seem to like joining wood with wood, be it dowels or any loose tennon, M&T's or just biscuits for alignment and glue but what do people think of using plastic connectors like the Lamello, is this a step away from woodworking or just another tool for modern flatpack.

 

[ChaiLatte]

Have a look at it. It is square so if you use it with the long sections horizontal, only the leftmost and rightmost dowels (into the thicker side sections) will ever see load. All the short sections will be vertical so in compression. Download the assembly instructions if this description is not clear.

At the sides, you could line the inside with a piece of 6mm plywood left and right so the weight transfers through the ply and relieves the dowels of stress. Every piece (8 total) would be the same size, so quick to cut.