Tastes may vary but it looks like it’s constructed pretty well. If there are grooves for the base and top of the wine bottle those turn buckles will hold it tightly in place. Not my thing, but nice upcycling design.
I tend to agree. It’s DIY tensegrity, and not really offensive as such. I wouldn’t buy it, but there’s $55 worth of material and labor and creativity here.
How is it tensegrity with rigid bottles used as support?
Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension.
The bottles are in compression, while the tensors are providing… You guessed it, tension.
Tensegrity usually means integrity from primarily tension, like cables used as the main struts for something. This just looks like it’s bottles as a structural element with rods preventing them from coming apart
I don’t know that I would go so far as a describing it as tensetrity, but the majority of the load on the shelves is held through the I/J hooks in between the bottles. The bottles are there more for stability.
Those are just pulling the shelves together and putting more pressure on the bottles.
This shelf is designed with “sit in a chair and fly by lifting the chair” logic.
I think we’re in agreement in both those regards.
I meant stability in the sense that it’s preventing shelf rotation. It does the job I guess, but I don’t see this being a particularly long-lived piece of furniture.
They could have glued the bottles then they don’t need the tension springs. Or if they prefer it to come apart, glue the bottom of the bottles and then run a bolt through the upper shelf down into the bottle opening below it.
The springs make me nervous.
Not springs, turnbuckles.
This is a very useful piece of furniture for those of us who want everyone who visits our house to know that we are an alcoholic.
I see some people saying it’s not so bad. They are wrong.
Yes everyone can have different opinions about aesthetics, but structurally it’s a terrible design.
Someone mentioned “but what if they’ve drilled receivers for the bottles” (like with forstner bits).
First of all it really doesn’t look like they’ve drilled receivers for the bottles, and if they had the receivers reduce the thickness of the shelf right where it needs to bear shear load the most.
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You can see that the top shelf is already warping from the hook tension.
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What is the bending strength of .75" of salvaged wood? That’s a really long span for that thin of a piece of wood to be loaded in bending. Shelf is going to be bouncy AF.
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If you put a load in the center of one of the upper shelves, how much can it start to bow before the tension of the hooks is misaligned and pulls the load off the bottle column.
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How will it resist parallel motion? Ie If someone pushes on it horizontally, parallel to the wall. Most layered shelves have metal hardware at the corners or a back secured at the corners.
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On the middle shelves, are the upper and lower hooks severely misaligned, or are they very shallowly threaded, or are they threaded right next to each other? I don’t think there’s a good choice there.
Maybe I’m biased or cynical but imo the only person that should own or use this is the person that designed and built it. (Reap what you sow)
I built a shelf almost exactly like this in college except I drilled holes for the tops of the bottles to sit in. It held a big CRT and a bunch of other stuff for 2 years
The turnbuckles are tightened and it becomes really stable
I also built this a decade or so ago. It’s still ok! Even loaded with probably too many books. The instructions I followed stipulated the holes for tops of bottles. And I used heavier bottles. And a double board thickness except for top and bottom levels. But we have no children. So the risk is just our own. Likely no worse than folks with glass coffee tables.
Was it on Instructables? That’s where I found it, I loved that site as a kid!
It was!
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Load-bearing glass bottles
If my furniture is going to fail, I really appreciate that it fail catastrophically.
Like bringing 12 live grenades into your home.
Why the hardware alone must have cost $15! What a bargain!
That’s at least $75 worth of wine!
Was, yes.
And I tried to see more pictures…
With the shelves dished like that, it’s essentially useless.
