Wire Shelf Shims

Another trivial laser cutter project:

I’m finally assembling the shelves for the last of the boxes cluttering the basement floor. Because the top of the wire shelf grid sits 4 mm below the top of the shelf rails, surely for some good reason, that pale strip is a 6 mm shim raising the grid just enough to let the boxes slide easily off without having to lift them over the rail.

It’s a pair of 3 mm thick MDF strips stuck together with tapeless sticky (a thin adhesive layer on backing paper), with the same adhesive holding the shim to the rail while I lay them down and plunk the shelf grid on top:

I made two sets of shims to fit the support rod spacing, with lengths carefully chosen to match two stacks from my Big Box o’ MDF Cutoffs, all 10 mm wide to fit the shelf rails:

Admittedly, not all of the neatly rounded corners came through, due to slight variations in MDF sizing / Print-and-Cut alignment / whatever, but it’s a nearly zero waste way to turn stock into strips.

Each shelf needs 14 shims = 28 strips and I’m here to tell you if I had to bandsaw 140 little strips for each of three sets of shelves, well, I:

• Probably wouldn’t ever get around to making them
• Definitely would grumble about lifting those boxes, forever

Watching that thing never gets old …