Fixing Ikeas Detolf.

This was originally posted on an older blog of mine.

Ikeas Detolf display cabinets are almost flawless arn't they?  I have looked and found nothing that even compares in that price bracket, but yet flawed they are.  (At least for those of us that want to display wee fighting men.)  Coming with only 3 shelves they do leave a lot of unused space, space that can be filled with more wee fighting men, one very popular method of getting in extra shelves is the cable grip method, this involves buying some 6mm cable clamps and a bit if fiddling, I would also recomend buying the extra shelves a little deeper than the originals if you do go this way.  For those of you unfamilier with this method you can find it here.

Not bad, but it does look like a cheap fix, I wanted something that would look a bit better and after shopping around I discovered I could get 6mm drawn steel rod for not much more than the cable clamps would cost me, so measuring the existing glass supports I bought enough 6mm rod to add 3 extra shelves per case.  (I picked up 2 really cheaply from a place that closed down.)

I only added 3 shelves and did not put an extra shelf in the bottom section, this gave me a larger section for anything big I may end up with.

I cut the rods to the required length.

But forgot to take a picture.

I then decided a simple jig would help position the rods a bit more accurately so constructed one from some spare wood, this would help prevent wobbly shelves.

Then using the jig to position everything welded the rods onto the existing uprights.

Then primed and repainted the frames.

And assembled the cabinet as usual.

No picture yet.

I got the shelves cut at a local glaziers, you can use the dimensions of the original shelves in this case, and I would recomend a pencil grind to finish the edges. 

There we have it, one modified and neat looking Detolf cabinet, next thing would be to add lights.