Food storage: Auto-rotating shelves!

Kerry are you talking about the canned goods auto feed things?

I've used them at a store once, they look like a great idea, but they take more time to load up, sure easy for taking a can, but a pain for loading, IIRC.

A guy over on The Wood Works recently built a really nice Pantry with double swinging doors etc.
pantryopenE.jpg


If you go to this thread and this thread <link

You will see a lot of ideas.

Cheers!
 
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Ooh, cue the Twilight Zone music! We were just talking about this same thing. The issue we would have is the variety of cans/contents versus the number per dispenser and number of dispensers. So we ruled out the rolling can set-up - though it is cool.:D My MIL's pantry uses pull out trays with full extension glides. Makes finding things easy, and allows for smaller numbers of each can variety. It also solves the issues with boxes and bottles.

FWIW,
Wes
 
Thanks for the feedback so far - those are some pretty neat ideas for a kitchen-based pantry. :thumb:

I should have given more detail about the problem we're trying to solve. We're working up having to a full year's supply of food in our basement. We buy cans of chili, fruit, beans, soup, etc by the flat, which then get stacked on top of each other. Kinda hard to get at things that way.

We already happen have 3 or 4 of those Gorilla Shelf / Muscle Rack heavy-duty utility shelf units (very much like the shelves on the link in post #1), and we could use some more. Some of those shelves contain odd-shaped items like boxes, bags, etc. But for cans, it seems like we have to choose between stacking vertically or wasting a lot of space.

If we had 8-to-10 "drop in" units for various-sized cans, we could load them from the front (like Stu described) after each "bulk purchase". It would help us to use the older items first, as well as make better use of the cubic footage on those shelves. (Some of the ShelfReliance units on the link in post #1 look they use more vertical space than necessary, but that might be a function of the discrete height adjustments of the shelves themselves.)

Anyway, I could have sworn that I saw some kind of plans years ago - before I was interested in woodworking. I guess I'll have to scale an all-out search ... or create my own. :doh:
 
I had one of those things for beverage cans in the fridge. They would frequently jam up because the cans would roll slightly crooked.

That might be another reason for designing the system to use "extra" vertical space. Each additional degree of slope on the ramps must help to overcome the jamming tendency a little bit.
 
Kerry,
I have a Friend in Montana who has something like what your looking for. They're WAY out in the woods and only go shopping about every 6 months. When you buy 50 cans of corn or whatever you need some sort of effective rotation system:) Anyhow, they made their pantry just like the example you showed with the individual rows. Each is as deep as the cabinet, maybe about 12", and the top and bottom are 1/4? Masonite (sp?). The top is slopped downward and the bottom toward the front. The slop is only about 3/4" or so. They don't have any jambing problems like the cheapy soda can ones. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that food cans are round with square ends unlike soda cans which are rounded on the tops and bottoms. I'd mock up a single test row and tweak it to fit your space with the best performance.

Mike
 
That's a good point. I noticed too that some of our local grocery stores have something like that for their soup cans. Veggies are still stacked the old fashioned way.
 
I saw a storage system used for paper work (but likely adaptable for other things) at my local elections board the other day. The shelves all rotated so that the bottom was always down, but the cabinet held a conveyor system so that a second set of shelves was always behind the first - this also meant that if you needed something off the "top" or "bottom" shelf, you just moved it to whatever level is comfortable for you.

I hope I've explained this well enough. Not sure if it will work for you or not, but I could see something like this made with recycled bicycle parts (gears and chains), black iron pipes and an ovular routed groove in the inside of the walls to make a "track" for the pipe ends (perhaps add bearings here) to stay in.
 
In the bar they have a self feeding rack for the bottles of cold ones. I is set up so the bottles stand up and slide forward ech tim one is removed. It mad out of stainless and has side walls tall enough to keep them from tipping over. You could use plastic for the bottom to help the can slide.
 
So far, the idea closest to what I had in mind is this one from the [CanRacks.com page]:

index.5.jpg


That little picture is the most detailed one available, probably because they want to sell DIY plans, not give everything away with detailed pictures. (Can't say as I blame them; it sounds like they've put more time into getting the designs to work than I would be willing to do.)


I saw a storage system used for paper work [...] The shelves all rotated [...] the cabinet held a conveyor system[....]

[...]I could see something like this made with recycled bicycle parts (gears and chains), black iron pipes and an ovular routed groove in the inside of the walls[....]

Wow - that sounds pretty wild. I'd like to see that! It reminds me of the really cool closet system that Kurt Russell's character (an underappreciated carpenter) whipped up for Goldie Hahn's character (an unbearable has-it-all) on her yacht in the movie [Overboard].

I actually have a few bike parts, including gears and chain, that I have saved with the idea of maybe whipping up a Richard Starr / Don Weber style foot-powered lathe. (Don't hold your breath!)


In the bar they have a self feeding rack [...] the bottles stand up and slide forward ech tim one is removed.

Gee - another gadget I'd like to see!


Thanks for the feedback , everybody! :thumb:
 
Wes, that is one cool site! :thumb: Thanks for posting it, had been lurking on this thread seeing what it was going to produce. Stu's post is what will eventually happen in my kitchen but that can rack is a must for our basement as we also purchase quarterly instead of as needed/wanted.
 
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