Temporary Shelf

I often find that, when I'm working at the woodworking bench, I need somewhere to put stuff down temporarily. Some of the time I can put things down on one end of the bench while I'm working at the other end, but my bench isn't very long and if the thing I'm working on is large, I quickly run out of space. To help with this issue, I made a temporary shelf for holding things out of the way while working on the bench.

It's designed to fit between the top box and fuel tank of my motorcycle: it can be quickly removed when I want to get the motorcycle out. It is made out of (and dimensioned based on) what I had: some 750 mm lengths of 3030 extrusion, some angle iron, some chopping board and the last bit of plywood I had.

The plywood is not permanently attached to the rails - it slides on using some rails made out an old chopping board (which I'd cut up a year or so ago but still had some bits left). I shaped them with the router table.

When not in use (and this is quite important), the table slides off easily and can be propped against the wall. The supports pivot up and are held in place with some magnets. The reason I can't raise the whole shelf with the plywood attached is that my clamps would get in the way.

The idea is that stuff that is actively in use goes on there (nothing permanent) and hence the shelf is mostly empty (so I can get the bike out quickly!). I guess worst case, I can always slide the shelf off with the contents still on and put the shelf + contents on the main bench when I want to take the motorbike out.

I initially only used it for relatively light items as I doubted the strength of the extrusion that forms a stop to set the angle of the shelf brackets. However, after a while of using it I decided to test it and put my (30 kg) portable workbench on top and it took the weight with no issues at all.

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