How to make quick and easy display shelves

If you are anything like me you will find that over time your collection of vaping stuff will seem to magically grow by leaps and bounds. Especially if you start to DIY your own juice. And your patience with sorting through jumbled mess in a shoe box will quickly wear thin. With this in mind I came up with a no frills design that anyone can make cheaply (under $10) and very quickly but will allow you to expand as needed.

Here Is what we are making. One for Juice bottles and One for Atomizers.

First step is deciding where you are going to place it. Whether in a cabinet, cubbie hole, a desk or table top then measure and write down height,width, and length. Now we drive to Home Depot for the 2 types of wood needed. I already had the materials at home left over from other projects so I just made both. You can do the same or just one or the other.

First the juice bottle one.

You need a 2"x2"x8 foot board (although they actually measure 1 1/2" wide not sure why?) Cost is around $2

Now you decide if you want Home Depot to cut your wood to size which they will they just won’t guarantee precision cuts.

Based off of the measurements you took before, If your shelves are going to be less than 36" long then you need 3 of each size if more than 36" then you need 4 of each

2"
4"
6"
8"
If more than 4 shelves high than go up on each piece by 2"

This will form your bases.

Next look for this cart somewhere in the lumber section.

Look at the 1 1/2" size pieces (poplar is the cheapest) and grab the amount for the number of shelves you plan to make in either the precut sizes or have them cut down to the size needed by Home Depot.

For my 2 units I used (1) 2x2x8 and (4) 1/4x1 1/2x48 hobby boards. The bottle space was 34" long so I needed 3 bases up to 8" high and 4 shelf’s 34" long. I used (3) of the remaining 14" hobby boards on the atomizer shelf and cut (2) 6" high bases leaving me with a 10" piece of 2x2x8.

Once back home find a flat place to work and grab any type of glue and start assembling the bases. Starting with the largest 2x2 piece lay it on it’s side add glue to one side of next smaller size and stack it on top like so.

While glue is still wet adjust the pieces so cut edge and sides line up as even as possible. Continue on until all bases are glued. Allow glue to dry for a few minutes.

Place bases with cut edge down where you planned for with 3rd one in the middle or 3rd & 4th evenly spaced for longer shelf’s. Then place hobby boards on other cut edge like so

For the atomizer one there is an extra step. Grab a pencil, ruler, and some atomizers. Lay them like so.

This will help you get a feel for how many will fit on your shelf and what spacing is needed between them. Then make 3/4 of an inch mark on both edges of shelf and using another shelf as straight edge draw a line down the center. Now transfer your spacing marks to that line.

Now grab a drill and a bit that is slightly larger than your 510 connector on the bottom of the Atomizer (I used 9/32) and drill at your marks you can either drill all the way through or stop right before test with an atomizer to make sure base lays flat against shelf.

Do the same for other shelves.

Once you are done with that I recommend you glue shelves to bases.

And were done! As I said at first no frills but very useful.

Now you get to decide what else you could use this shelf for or maybe sand and stain or paint them.

As for me after looking at the first picture I really need to get my bottle labels under control and now I know exactly where to place them on the bottle for optimum viewing.

Thanks for reading. As always all comments, critiques, and or questions are much appreciated.

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Very nice! I used to be a woodworker. Now I work with metal. I have some things in the works. But I really like this nifty idear!

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Nice intro into the forum there @Sonar505! :sunglasses: And welcome!

Yeah, I’ve been using USPS shipping boxes in a tiered fashion for my DIY shelves! :pensive: One day soon (snow day), I’ll eventually get out of my winter blues and get on the stick with making some real shelves! I’ve almost got everything to do it…got my table saw, jig saw, screws, carpenter square, hammer, glue, drill gun, clamps, etc…but, I haven’t found the one thing which will make it all possible… I’ve lost my round tuit! :laughing: If anybody sees it please let me know…It looks like this:

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They look great!

My understanding is that when someone talks about a 2x4 they are referring to the rough cut from the lumber mill. What you get from the home supply store has had all the rough surfaces planed to smoothness and that tends to lose about half an inch.

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Great first post, and what a nice contribution. You’re gonna fit right in here!

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well done and welcome to the wormhole… lol

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Very nice @Sonar505!!! Thank you for taking the time to get the pictures and type out the instructions for the community. If you ever decide to refine your shelf system into a work of art, please feel free to share again. I’m currently looking into creating a shelf system inside the hutch of my desk (73"x73" Corner Desk w/72"x16" hutch area to work with) and will be using most of your ideas to do so.

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roflmao Ok, I actually had to read that about 3 x to get the round tuit. :wink:

@Sonar505 Thanks so much for the tut! Very very handy. This will help with my tiered shelving, but I have to confess… what I’m truly coveting is your flavor shelves that open and close, book style. I’ve got a metal ‘as seen on tv’ contraption called a ‘Swivel Shelf’ that’s rather similar in function, but not a tenth as snazzy as your shelves that I adore, but it doesn’t fit 70% of my flavor bottles. If you ever have the time/inclination to post instructions to those, I’d be seriously thrilled to bits. And seriously, you are putting the rest of us to shame! lol

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Sonar hasn’t been seen on any of the forums for over a year now. You could probably find a carpenter or a store like Lowes to help you draw up plans.

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I’m not ready to tackle it yet, but I’m sure I’ll be able to mockup plans for my wooden swivel shelvey type things eventually. That’s a great plan when I am. Thanks, Letita.

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@OddModicum Not a big fan of those display type of things. I just took a little chest of drawers on wheels from IKEA and I recycle the cardboard boxes to cut out separators (small ones per row, taller ones per brand). All flavors are sorted alphabetically and per brand. It’s easy to move the whole thing where I need it because it’s on wheels.


After use, close the drawers, the flavors are away from any light source and I roll it back so it’s out of my way.

Perhaps not an ideal solution, especially when dealing with larger bottles. But it’s something that works well for me and didn’t cost me anything (someone wanted to get rid of it). Especially the ability of being able to move it where needed has proven to be very useful.

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Something like that would really be ideal for me… something I could wheel around from place to place. I’ll have to keep my eye out for little cart things with drawers or bins.

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If you get something with drawers, make sure they’re tall enough to fit your larger bottles, that’s the only real issue I have. You can see in the pic some are laying flat. I haven’t had any leaks yet for the last 3 years, keeping my fingers crossed though.

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Ok, so obviously a craftsman solution is ideal, but since I can’t make one right now, I think I’m going to pick up these wheeled carts w drawers. $21.50 for 2 of them, which is outstanding. I believe they’re ‘tall’ enough to accommodate any bottle, but they don’t list exact dims of drawers. However, reviewer references using for lotion and nail polish remover bottles, so I think they’ll be fine for 4 oz flavor bottles. They’re not bad looking, and also come in a dusty blue or black accent, I just happen to like the mint. Also, since they’re clear plastic drawers, easy to view contents, and super easy to wipe down if any drippies (for me, always an issue).

I was really thinking along the lines of tiered shelving eventually, but with my health concerns, a wheeled cart def makes more sense now. And ANYTHING beats the ‘some in a metal shelf thingie, a bunch more in a box, another slew in this other boxy thing’ non solution I’ve got going on now.

Thanks so much for the idea, @anon28032772!


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