When a friend once suggested we use 12-inch lengths of industrial steel I-beams as “brackets” to hold shelves, we couldn’t quite imagine what he was thinking. UNTIL we spotted the fabulously rusted I-beam shelving at metal fabricator while wandering through East Harlem last fall.
When we saw the makeshift shelving the owner had improvised to store his materials, we GOT it.
An I-beam (also known as an H-beam) is an I-shaped beam made of aluminum or steel, that comes in varying sizes and thicknesses.
Metals Depot has trove of offerings you can buy online, sized to your specifications. As you can see from the steel works, they come in all sorts of sizes…
We also seen them available in fiberglass…
As you can see from the iron workers shelving, i-beams can be configured in different sizes…
…and could be used to hold wood slab shelves instead of the metal sheets below…
The designer used the i-beam shape to fabricate a side-table…
And i-beams can be fabricated out of wood as well, for furntiture and bookshelves…
If we could, we’d hunt down rusty I-beams like the iron monger’s beauties…
