Stop Your Galley Jars From Sliding: A 3D-Printed Wall Rack

Anchor up, autopilot on, first wave on the beam — and the jar of instant coffee that's been sitting happily on the galley shelf all season finally slides off, rolls across the sole, and cracks open under the nav table. Every sailor has some version of this story: a shelf that works perfectly at the dock and turns into a projectile launcher the moment the boat starts moving.

The usual fixes are half-measures. Bungee cord across the shelf front catches jars but makes them a pain to grab one-handed while you're bracing with the other. Rubber shelf liner helps with vibration but does nothing once you're heeled over 20 degrees. A dedicated spice rack from a marine chandlery is built for someone else's locker, in someone else's number of jars, and rarely fits the oddly-shaped space you actually have next to the stove.

The part that actually solves this is boringly simple: a rail that bolts to your bulkhead or locker wall, sized to your space, holding exactly as many jars as you want, each one hooked on rather than resting on a shelf.

A wall rack sized to your galley, not a catalog size

That's the idea behind the Modular Jar Kit from our Galley & Refrigeration collection: a printable wall rail plus one to three square jars, each with a round screw-on lid and a name embossed straight into the plastic. You pick how many jars you need — one for salt by the stove, three for coffee, sugar and tea — set each jar's size and label in our 3D configurator, preview the result, and get back STL files for the rail, every jar body and every lid.

What makes it work underway is the L-hook molded into the back of every jar. Instead of sitting loose on a shelf, each jar hangs from the rail and stays hung — you can heel the boat, pitch into a chop, or knock the locker door open, and the jar doesn't go anywhere until you lift it off on purpose. The rail itself uses end pads and M5 slots, so you can screw it straight to a bulkhead, the underside of a shelf, or the inside of a locker door.

What you're actually configuring

This isn't a fixed product with a "small/medium/large" dropdown. Everything that matters is parametric:

• Number of jars on the rail — 1, 2 or 3
• Each jar's own base size and height, so a squat salt jar and a taller coffee jar can share one rail
• The screw cap diameter, which adapts automatically to whatever base size you choose
• The embossed name on each jar — COFFEE, SUGAR, SALT, or whatever your galley actually needs
• Rail length, which scales automatically to the number and width of jars you add

Take your measurements before you order the files: the width of the wall or bulkhead space you're mounting to, and how deep a jar you can fit without it fouling a locker door or a drawer underneath. Those two numbers are what you'll enter in the configurator.

Material and print settings

The jars and lids are designed to print flat-side-down with no supports, and the thread fit between jar and lid is already tuned with roughly 0.4 mm of clearance, so a reasonably calibrated printer should give you a cap that turns smoothly without being loose. For the galley specifically:

• PETG is the sensible default — it tolerates the odd splash near the stove or sink better than plain PLA and doesn't get brittle over time.
• PLA prints the cleanest lettering for the embossed names if the jars will stay somewhere dry and out of direct sun, like a cupboard rather than a shelf over the stove.
• ASA is worth the extra print time for the rail itself if it's going anywhere that gets warm, since it holds its shape better than PETG under sustained heat.

If you've never dialled in thread tolerances on your printer before, our guide on calibrating tolerances for marine parts is worth ten minutes before you commit to a full print run of jars and lids.

Fitting it in the galley

Most boats have one obvious spot for this: the dead vertical space beside or behind the stove that's too narrow for a shelf but perfectly fine for a rail three or four centimetres deep. Mark your screw positions against the rail's end pads, pilot-drill, and mount with stainless screws sized to whatever's behind the bulkhead — plywood backing takes a straightforward wood screw, while a cored panel is happier with a screw into a backing block or a threaded insert. Once the rail is up, the jars simply hook on and lift off, so decanting a fresh bag of coffee or topping up the salt takes seconds rather than wrestling a lid off a rolling jar in the sink.

If you're setting up more than one storage rail in the galley, the same rail hardware is shared with the Modular Cylinder Holder Kit, which swaps square jars for cylindrical holders sized for cans, bottles, pens or a mug — useful if you want jars on one rail and drink holders on another right next to it.

Related designs worth a look

If you only need one jar rather than a full rail, the standalone Storage Jar with Screw Lid is a free download with the same custom-name embossing — a good way to test the fit and your printer's tolerances before committing to the full kit. And if your galley project this month is more about fresh herbs than dry storage, our Hydro Wick Planter uses a similar self-contained, wall-friendly approach for growing basil or mint on board — see our guide on growing herbs on board for more on that one. For the wider question of keeping a galley usable underway, our piece on galley organizers covers more of the small fixes that add up.

A safety note

These are printed storage parts, not certified marine equipment. They're fine for holding dry galley staples, but check that whatever material you print in is suitable for your intended use, keep them away from open flame and hot stovetop surfaces, and don't rely on a printed part for anything structural or safety-critical. Inspect prints periodically for stress cracking, especially anything mounted somewhere it takes repeated knocks.

Questions about sizing the rail to your galley, or which material to pick for your climate? Email us at info@marinelab3d.com — we're happy to help before you commit a print run.