Fixed freezer shelf, remove or manipulate?

So through a bit of luck and with a little sweet talk I was able to get my hands on a free upright freezer. It was actually pretty cool as I have been looking for one for a while to use as a place to put my fermenting beers. I really was not able to look at it before I got it in my garage, so imagine my surprise when I opened it up and saw that it has two fixed shelves. These shelves are in such a place that it is impossible to fit a carboy into the freezer.

My question is, have any of you had any luck removing or at least bending this type of shelf out of the way? I doubt that it can be removed, but I may be wrong. The thing is pretty old, it is Penncrest freezer, I would upload a pic, but all of my cameras are on the fritz at the moment.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!

If you search through you'll find many tales of woe about the upright freezers with the coolant tubing in the shelves. Sounds like that's what you have.

Cliff notes version of the threads would be that you can try bending the shelf, but it's tricky and if you aren't very careful and lucky you'll end up breaking the tubing, letting all the coolant out and turning the freezer into the world's biggest paperweight.

One option is to find fermenters that will fit on the shelves as they are. There's a picture on here somewhere of an upright freezer filled with "Vittles Vault" type fermenters.

Thank you sir. Looks like I made the classic mistake and didn't search before posting. I shall willingly take the 20 lashes as punishment for my crime.

I did take you advice though and looked through the threads. I think before I do anything I will ask my neighbor to take a look at it. He is an HVAC tech that works with the store ice cream freezers quite a bit. With his advice and what I have found here I will decide which way to go.

Thanks again!

I've bent shelves out of the way but the shelves were exposed coolant tubes with wire welded to the top.

Yeah, read up on some of these and after bending the shelves out of way successfully, I had to move them just a little more and decided that I could manually break the welds between the coolant tubes and the shelf.

It worked on 98% of the welds. About 2% broke the weld AND took a little piece of coolant tube with it...resulting in numerous leaks. With the freezer off, however, I had no problems manipulating the coolant tubes. Still don't have a cold side of the freezer, but for now, temps are still lower than 70...not yet an issue. This summer, however, I'll have to look for a new and creative way to control the cold.

Good luck.

~d