Woodbin’s Sagulator
So, you want to build a bookcase with some shelves to hold a few nick-nacks in the living room. Rather than spend lots of money, you opt to build them out of painted MDF. After a few months of holding ceramic kitties and a vase of flowers, your spouse says, “Don’t you think it wold be cool if we put my 1957 collection of the Encyclopedia Brittanica up there? They look so good.”
After a few books go up on the shelves, you notice a huge sag in the middle of the shelf span. Bummer.
How were you to know? Well, if you had checked with Woodbin’s Sagulator, you would have known exactly how much those shelves would have sagged.
This ingenious calculator allows you to determine the amount of sag you can expect based on the shelving material, thickness, width of the shelves and the weight of the goods they can be expected to hold. You can even calculate how adding an edge to the shelves can improve their ability to hold weight.
If your plans include building some shelving, the Sagulator is an excellent resource to use in the design phase.
So here is a thought for a book case that really holds books. Place wood supports (braces) where sags would occur. In the picture above probably two placed equal distance appart on each shelf. Take the book cover “end” from an old book and glue it to the support board on the end so it looks like a book. Make sense?
A clever idea to retrofit an existing shelf to bear more weight…
But, what happens when Aunt Louise REALLY wants to read Moby Dick, and all she grabs is a shelf support? 😉