So I thought I would utilise the brilliant hive mind to find what I’ve spent some of today hunting for. I’m converting my caddy van to be useable to stay over in and I’ve decided to put a detachable cooking shelf on the backdoor of the van. I’m going to use a sliding rail system (trimmed down from the original length) to secure one side of the tabletop to the backdoor panel that I’ve made out of 3mm plywood.

MVM Mid Grey Sliding Table Rail for Campervan Caravan Motorhome T4 T5 850mm

400mm x 400mm Campervan, Motorhome, Caravan Table Top, Red Finish

Then my plan for the other side was to either use two or one metal rod as a removable support arm (similar to a bonnet stay).

1) I’ll obviously be utilising a right angled triangle as the support and assuming the table top is 40cm, I’m wondering if the better strength/support would be to use a Isosceles right angled triangle. I’m guessing someone with an engineers mind will know exactly which is stronger or whether for the size of the table it wont really matter.

2) Can anybody find the type of brackets I’m trying to use and tell me what they’re called. There will be one or two staying on the backdoor panel and then matching on the tabletop shelf. Would be like a flat bracket but with a lump in it basically that the rod can then slide into.

The tabletop and metal rods would then be stored inside the van when not in use.

Cheers

You can get prefabricated big folding brackets that do exactly this, but the support brace folds when dropping the table.

Also, I don’t think 3mm ply is man enough to mount this on, I’d go with 9mm with extra 9mm glued behind the areas where your hardware will be screwed to it.

Yeah its occurred to me that 3mm is a bit on the flexible side, however, the plan is that the shelf will fully remove rather than drop and it only has to support a cheap one ring cooker when in use so I’d hoped that in reality it would be strong enough especially as using a bonnet stay type metal rod and the type of braces that I’m looking for will mean its strong enough.

You want these

I use a pair in a kitchenette. Theyre surprisingly strong and easy to collapse. and lock

Cheers yeah I’ve found those but they’d be on all the time and I’m really trying to avoid something too cumbersome being on all the time. I’ll be able to still use a storage net on the door and it be a useable/subtle addition this way.

Scrapyard. A short bonnet stay (plenty of modern cars use short stays). Cut out in the ply for the plastic socket and attach the other end to the table

I would also be concerned about 3mm ply…nuts, bolts and big mudwing washers to hold the sliding bit on. If you can’t get to the back you could try Interset hollow wall anchors, but the smallest I’ve seen are for 4mm

I think I’ll defo be taking the panel off and adding a cross member support behind it to slightly reinforce the 3mm ply for the rail as a minimum.

Another thought struck me as I was gurning up a hill earlier, dunno why.

You could use a loose pin butt hinge and a wooden strut; butt hinge the strut to the table top so that it folds away, one half of the loose pin hinge on the other end of the strut, and the second half on the door lining. Replace the loose pin with a cut-down cooking skewer so that it’s easier to get hold of the loop and remove the pin.

If you’re not too bothered with the sliding bit, put another two loose pin hinges on the table top/door lining in place of the rail and you just saved a few quid 🙂

Oooo yes you may be on to something there with the use of a loose pin butt hinge. Could even try to find cooking skewer or similar gauge metal rod which would in effect link the two sections of the hinge from the table top to the door bottom. Could cut down the hinge as it wouldn’t need to be the full width of it! One hinge may in theory do both metal rods.

I’ve also just discovered a lift off hinge as well which could work well!

You can get heavy duty versions of the shelving brackets that slot in, which would hold the table fine – the weaker point will be on the back ply panel. Slatwall fixings would also work and be less obtrusive.