Bunglebubs said:
Hi Snakebite, yes very useful thankyou. Some of the supports look like there is a bolt of some kind going through them, might be my eyes though :lol:
I think I would have perhaps placed some kind of material between the glass and the support like rubber or those sticky pad things you get in packaging. None the less it is a great display and one to be proud of. I have a few various sized items and ideas like this one of yours are very helpful
I really do understand your concerns about placing something between the supports and the glass, but trust me, they really aren't necessary if the cabinet is enclosed. If you intend to use this shelf system without a cover. i.e. where the shelves might be knocked by accident, then yes, I would absolutely recommend securing the shelves by some additional means
. However, I have built several cabinets using this shelf system over the years, all with unsecured glass shelves, but all with perspex front covers. You might be surprised to learn that I've never had any problems of any kind with the shelves. The glass doesn't even get scratched. Glass (of the correct thickness!) is a lot tougher than most people think, and this is not toughened glass either, as that simply isn't necessary for the weight and stress it will support. If the cabinet front covers were glass then they would definitely need to be toughened, but after one extremely costly experiment where I fitted several new cabinets with toughened glass fronts and had one pane explode for no apparent reason in the middle of the night (which, I was very surprised to learn, toughened glass can do on rare occasions for a few different reasons, including the presence of a tiny amount of nickel sulphide as an impurity), I immediately switched back to perspex and swallowed the cost. I'm still thankful to this day that I had nothing valuable in the cabinets when this happened:
I shudder to think of the cost if I'd had anything vintage in there when the pane went pop! Luckily, the cabinets had only just had the glass pane inserting and I hadn't had a chance to start filling it with any display items, but if it had blown just a few weeks later... :shock:
Needless to say the experience unnerved the hell out of me, and I will never use toughened glass in my cabinets again. Fortunately, ordinary float glass (i.e. untoughened) cannot suffer the same catastrophic failure as toughened, so it is perfectly safe for the shelves. Yes, I was incredibly unlucky to have an exploding piece of toughened glass, but the very fact that it actually happened to me irreversibly means I refuse to ever use it again.
As for your comments about it looking like bolts are going through some of the shelves, whilst I'm not sure which photo(s) you are referring to, I can assure you there aren't any, honest! This particular shelving system has holes in the underside of the shelf supports to allow screws to be used to fix wooden shelves to the supports from beneath. Obviously however, that isn't an option with glass shelves, so I don't use them ;-)
If you are thinking about making your own cabinet, I would definitely encourage you to do so. I will happily provide any tips or advice if you have any questions you think I can assist with. I'm actually in the midst of building another cabinet right now, and for the first time I am photographing every single stage of the process (I have done before and after shots before). I thought it might make for a useful / interesting guide of sorts for forum members who fancied a go at building their own. If I do post that, it won't be for a few weeks yet though, so if you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to post them or PM me
Jeremy
PS - My handle's snaketibe, not snakebite... I won't bore you with why, but it's not a typo ;-)
, it's not only Star Wars that's expensive, really nice intresting collection, in a great cabinet!
