Fitting in more bottles..
Posted: 18:51 Sun 07 Oct 2018
Of all the various wine storage systems, the traditional wood and metal racks are as space efficient as any other, barring large bins.
And although always quoted in mm, the dimensions usually translate back to imperial measures, the pitch of racks of standard bottles being either 3 13/16" (96.8mm) or 3 7/8" (98.4mm), depending on the manufacturer, and the metal strips are normally 3/4" wide.
But could more bottles be fitted in if the pitch was reduced?
The actual diameter of regular wine bottles mostly varies between 3 1/64" and 3 15/64" - only the dumpiest bottles exceed 3 1/4". However if you try to reduce the pitch of the rack to nearer that figure, you will get to the situation where the bottles can only be loaded from the bottom up and unloaded from the top down, as without some vertical wriggle room they will otherwise lock each other in.
But although these racks are invariably manufactured with an equidistant vertical and horizontal pitch, I can't see a reason why this should be necessary.
Whilst keeping the same vertical pitch, if the horizontal pitch were reduced to 3 3/8" the space efficiency could be increased by well over 10%. The bottles would sit a little higher on the staves, but they would still be stopped from accidentally sliding out by the metal horizontals.
- Or am I missing something?
And although always quoted in mm, the dimensions usually translate back to imperial measures, the pitch of racks of standard bottles being either 3 13/16" (96.8mm) or 3 7/8" (98.4mm), depending on the manufacturer, and the metal strips are normally 3/4" wide.
But could more bottles be fitted in if the pitch was reduced?
The actual diameter of regular wine bottles mostly varies between 3 1/64" and 3 15/64" - only the dumpiest bottles exceed 3 1/4". However if you try to reduce the pitch of the rack to nearer that figure, you will get to the situation where the bottles can only be loaded from the bottom up and unloaded from the top down, as without some vertical wriggle room they will otherwise lock each other in.
But although these racks are invariably manufactured with an equidistant vertical and horizontal pitch, I can't see a reason why this should be necessary.
Whilst keeping the same vertical pitch, if the horizontal pitch were reduced to 3 3/8" the space efficiency could be increased by well over 10%. The bottles would sit a little higher on the staves, but they would still be stopped from accidentally sliding out by the metal horizontals.
- Or am I missing something?