Hey, it's been a while since there have been any construction photos here, hasn't it? We had some plumbing work done this week: we added a few more floor drains to the balcony and lounge bars. They had been intermittently leaking through the floor for, oh, about two years now. The idea is that you put the drains at the low point of the floor, and assuming that our original plumbers did that (a big assumption, actually) the floors must have settled shortly thereafter, so water would pool up and eventually leak through, causing a mess downstairs. We fixed this a couple times by re-coating the tiles with some kind of waterproof sealant, but that didn't last very long, so we finally bit the bullet and had some new drains installed at the current low water marks. Friday night will be their test run. Wish us luck.
Also, we added a shelf to the wall under the stairs, where the auxilliary bar goes. (In case you hadn't noticed, we have a second small bar in the main room that we roll out on especially busy nights.) The shelf behind it means it can be more fully stocked now. I imagine the shelf may also be useful at shows, when there's a merch table there instead. It folds up against the wall when not in use.
You are excited by this dramatic news, I am sure.
20 Responses:
I'm curious about the design of the self that I'm looking at in the pictures.
So, does that mean that as soon as a bartender who is trying to serve as quickly as possible turns around with their arms out to reach for a bottle that the entire shelf which is loaded with nice glass bottles full of expensive liquor will flop up and down when they accidentally hit the chains?
Also, it looks like the hinges were screwed into the top of the shelf making it so that the screws are bearing all the weight instead of the hinges. Thus, over time (and typical night club abuse that we all know so well), the screws could work their way out of the wood (especially if it is wet from serving/spilling booze).
The chains certainly aren't going to come loose, not with that massive rings.. I use the same thing to pull trucks out of mud..
As for the shelf moving up and down... with any sort of weight, that thing will take a lot of left and right movement in the chain to make the board come up.. even the board itself looks fairly beefy.. plywood, i'd hope, and not MDF or similar..
I would assume the hinges are mounted like that so the board will fold flush to the wall. if you brought the hinges down a 1/2 inch (or however thick the shelf is) and mounted the hinges to the bottom, you'd find that the shelf would not fold flat to the wall.
if you put a spacer between the wall and the hinge, you could mount them from the bottom.
At any rate, as long as it's good hardware, I wouldn't worry about the weight..
The only thing I'd worry about would be bottles falling off the sides... Time will tell, things in bars tend to evolve very quickly, if they don't work well under pressure.
Hi nester,
I didn't say anything about the chains or rings coming loose. Those definitely look strong.
It's the 'any sort of weight' part that I'm curious about. So, if I'm the bartender and I'm stocking the shelf and I put a bottle on it. Then, I hit the chain as I'm putting another bottle on it, will it cause the shelf to move and potentially knock over the bottle?
I think that basic physics dictates that if you shorten the chain at all (ie: by causing the straight chain line to bend), it will cause the shelf to move. More weight isn't necessarily going to prevent the chain from bending enough to not cause the shelf to move.
If jwz or someone else posts to say that they tried bumping into the chains and the shelf didn't move, then I will stop my questioning of the design. Otherwise, you are just guessing.
If you mount the hinges below the shelf, that just means that the shelf has to fold down instead of up. Not sure if that is a good thing or not, but it seems like a more stable design to me.
As for the screws pulling out of the wood, I'm not sure what that has to do with the hardware. At my place, I have seen about 8x now the screws in the hinges literally pulled out of the wood in the doors because of typical club abuse. I was fixing another problem like that just yesterday so that is why I was curious about the design here.
jon
One bottle is probably not enough weight, but a fully stocked bar would do it..
as for the screws.. if i were building this, i wouldn't use screws at all. I'd use bolts, flat washers on either side of the board, a lock washer and then a nut.
However, due to the pictures, we're left to guess about a lot of stuff... and really, this whole discussion is purely academic, because the shelf is built, and I don't think jwz is really looking for suggestions.. hence why it appears that he hired a professional to construct it in the first place.
Bolts flat washers and wood glue through 3/4 inch ply. the chains are easy to reach around as the polls in the shelves at all the other bars and so far i have not heard of any bottles going boom not that it couldn't happen.
Like I said in the other response I bounced on this thing full weight (260)
and the only thing that might give is the chains and they where suppose to be temporary.
physics also dictates that if there is a lot of tension on the chains, they will resist lateral movement. Regardless, the chains seem like an entanglement hazzard. picture grabbing a bottle, turning quickly, the bottle hits the chain, slips loose, and SMASH! all over the floor.
when this shelf was originally discussed, I had assumed it would be supported from below, via folding legs, or perhaps a second hinged panel that swings out sideways. newp.
re: physics...it also says that if there is enough force to move the chains that when the shelf swings back down after moving, there will be even more force exerted on the items on the shelf when the chains are straight again.
Don't forget that the chains also act as a sort of lever...so if you move them horizontally in the middle of the length of chain, it will be much easier than moving them at the top or bottom.
re: the part about the chains being in the way...I agree fully...I just didn't want to point out the obvious more than I had to...=)
My prediction is that jwz is going to have to hire a professional to fix this thing in another month and will post a grudge about it here (with pictures of the new design).
let me invoke pythagoras here for a moment.
when there is lateral force applied, you essentially create 2 right-triangles, with the hypotenuses being the chain from the point of pressure.
so lets say the chain is 6' long and we push the chain sideways 1" in the middle.
the distance that the shelf will rise is 0.03"
36 * 36 = 1296
1296 - (1*1) = 1295
sqrt(1295) = 35.9861
but since there are 2 right triangles, we double that to get the new distance between shelf and ceiling to get 71.9722
if pushed 2 inches laterally, it's still only a mere 0.1" vertical movement.
So, with the .1" of vertical movement, how much force is then exerted/transfered on/to the bottles when the chains snap tight?
I guess it's easier to burn money than break bottles.
well it's been a couple of months and so far I haven't heard anything about shelf problems.
The reason's for it's design where discussed by many people bartenders managers etc, etc. The shelf needed to fold up so the satelite bar could be placed against the wall when not in use. Hence the hinge direction. The reason there are no legs is the bar would then not fit under and you would need to mount them and most likely they would get lost. This shelf could easily support my weight bouncing on it at 260lbs. The srews are 1/4 inch concrete screws 4 inches in the wall with bounding a bonding agent ( I forget which one) and If I remember correctly there is 8 of them. They wont be coming out even if the shelf did.
The only weak link (pun intended) is the chain which was always intended to be replaced but the local hardware store had poor selection.
After having kept the DNA glued together for a many months I realized that things have to be able to be replaced easily with common parts, sturdier than what they would install in prison and spray painted black.
BTW I have been working in construction and maintenance for for at least ten years so I think I can called a "professional".
We could however start a pool as to when or how the thing does eventually come down cause if it's the DNA at some point some one is going to figure out how to break it.
Well, <lj user="jqmark"> built it, so if it doesn't work out... I think I hear <lj user="baconmonkey"> volunteering to fix it.
Pre-emptively, <lj user="baconmonkey"> points to previously used folding tables and inquires as to why Rube Goldberg had to solve the problem of "facilitating convenient placement of booze for bartender".
And I'll be using ps2 extension cables and a kernel rebuild in my ingeneous solution.
i'm very disturbed by the amount of heineken being displayed.
i realize the green goes well with the vt100 color scheme of the bar's logo, but does it have to be provided by such crappy beer?
Gotta give the people what they want.. :)
Bud Light and Heineken, probably top 2 in bottled beer.
corona beats out bud light for most events.
Must be a west coast thing.. :)
that beer is usually kept out-of-sight in top-load refrigerators, which had to be moved because they were all, amazingly, on the low points of the floor. Funny how a couple hundred pounds of beer, redbull, and water might be A. the cause of new floor low-points, and B. really hard to move.
No, the really funny part is how the original plumbers didn't think, "hey, let's put drains under the fridges." That part's fuckin' hilarious.
We provide crappy music, also!
i was playing gta vice city the other day, when on one of the radio stations on the game- in the midst of a talk about russia i hear the lady say
'I, for one, welcome our new russian masters' ;]