Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i just finished building a 4x2x2 out of 3/4 birch ply with linoleum and silicone on the inside its workin pretty good but putting the linoleum in was a pain in the butt. im curious about melamine does anyone have any cages made out of it, if so hows it workin for you.

When using linoleum it is easier if you apply the linoleum before you assemble the cage. Takes a little bit more planning but it is much easier in the long run.
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Michael McFadden, M.S., D.V.M.

Melamine is decent. The type they sell at Home Depot is not near the better quality a cabinet shop could get for you.

Birch ply is fantastic stuff. It is super durable and much lighter in weight than melamine. I say stick with it. For the floor, you have some options.

One is epoxy. I finally found Envirotex epoxy bar-top coating at a craft store. You could seal that floor with a nice thick pour-on coat. I haven't tried it on a large cage. Once cured, it is safe to eat off of.

Another option is using the 3mm thick expanded PVC to cover the floor. You can cut it with a sharp utility knife and a straight edge (score it multiple times fairly deep then fold along the score.) The edges can be sealed with epoxy putty for a super duper durable seal. The epoxy putty can be found anywhere nowadays and is waterproof and scrub-proof. Any damage to the plastic floor can be filled with the putty too.

Or, ala Chris Harper, use thicker PVCx and let the whole floor be that (no plywood on the floor, just a frame of 1x2s to rest the plastic onto.)
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Mark

thanks a lot i might be adopting an 8 ft coastal is y i ask i have a 4x2x2 base that my 4x2x2 jcp cage sits on that could easliy be made into a cage if i do that ill make the base 6x2x2 and put her on concrete blocks.(so the cage will be 6x2x2)

"One is epoxy. I finally found Envirotex epoxy bar-top coating at a craft store. You could seal that floor with a nice thick pour-on coat. I haven't tried it on a large cage. Once cured, it is safe to eat off of."

where can you buy that at.i wished i had thought linoleum first i had shot around thin plexi, certain paints ended up tryin vynil self adhesive flooring (after i had assembled the cage) well to say the least that ended up lookin like crap went to lowes saw some great lookin stone print linoleum put that in.it was a pain fittin as the cage has a divider (my jcps are a little over two ft.) im pretty handy and have access to all the tools you can imagine so anything really would work but of course the cheaper it is the better..lol (im pretty frugil but my snakes are taken better care of than i am..lol)

the melamine though im trying to think of how to put it together as its basically partical board with a coatin and generally cracks whenever u do anything without a perfect predrill. how would u secure it? the linoleum only cost ,me 30$ for two 2x12 sheets, pl contruction adhesive and silicone so ill prolly end up goin with that.

one great thing i did find out is that menards sells pre cut oak and birch in 2x2 and 2x4 pieces along wih pre cut oak hard wood pieces. that makes things so much easier and its barely more expensive(3/4 in 4x8 sheet is 43$ a 3/4 2x4 sheet is 12 $ i found out 4x8 sheets when u live in an apartment are a pain in the butt)

thanks so much for the help and i know i ramble..lol

your right the one thing that makes it hard to work with is the fact that it cracks and chips easy. however the methods for building your frame are all the same as it you where to use ply wood.

you mentiond acess to penty of tool, if thats the case i would recomend using a datoing out the sides to recive top and bottom then glue and clamp (screws can be used here also but not needed). the dato groove can be cut a couple different ways. one being a dato blade in a table saw, this is prolly the easiest to set up. but running big sheets of plywood or heavy melimine through the table saw con sometime be very hard. a hand held router can be use also but a little harder to set up. lay your peice flat and figure where your groove is going, then measure from the bit to the edge out the router base and clamd dont a straightedge the length of your peice that distance away from your cut. the straight egde is use as a fence or guide to keep the cut even and straight. if you have a router bit 13/16th use that then only one fence is needed, just uses multiple passes till your 3/8th depth is acquired. otherwise use a fence on either side of your cut and run two passes on each side at each depth till you reach your 3/8th..... its a bit harder to set up and alot more math and figureing but if done right can yeild the same results.

another way to do it is to use but joints and just glue and screw it all together (prolly the easiest if you dont have the right tools)

to make this way a little better you can drill and dowel these joints for extra strength. this isnt hard just make sure you mesure accruatly to get it to line up where it needes to be. i wont get into those details right now but let me know if thats how you want to do it.

thats the basics of it hope something there helped, one more tip it you do go with melimine i recomend whats called Kangroo Glue i dont know where to get it, not sure if Hdepot or Lowes carries it or not, but its worth looking into.
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-Stephen-

0.1 soon to be wifey (hopefully)
1.0 rotwiler/chow (Boomer-wifey's pooch)
1.0 norm corn (Jake aka grumpy old terdhead)
0.1 col redtail boa (Dixie-my baby girl)
0.1 ball python (Bella- wifey's baby girl)

hopeful for not to distant future:
--brazillian rainbow boas 1 female for sure
2 or 3? maybe a breeding pair?

more distant future hopefuls
1 or 2 of each maybe a breeding pair?
--anery boa (ooooh)
--jungle carpet python (love to have 1 or 2)
--dumeril boa (ahhhh)

slightly more wishful thinking
--hypo br rainbow boa (love em)
--anery br rainbow boa (oooh even better!!)
--motely boa (gorgeous!!)

all that above is asuming you use melimine, it is a good product and work great in this aplication. i also agree with chris its alot heavier than plywood. a plywood cage with an epoxy coating i bet would be great, that sounds like a good set up to me.

with the melimine you can get it 3/4" at Hdepot pretty cheap but that makes for a heavy cage, but if your never gonna move it thats not an issue. one other option is get your stuff at a cabinet shop or right from a distributer. i work at a cabinet shop and we have access to 1/4 melimine that we use for drawer bottome and cabinet backs. you could get some of this (i plan to on the cages i want to build) and use for a back or a bottom to cut down on the weight. only thing is (and im not sure about this) you might pay a little more per sheet.... just a thought
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-Stephen-

0.1 soon to be wifey (hopefully)
1.0 rotwiler/chow (Boomer-wifey's pooch)
1.0 norm corn (Jake aka grumpy old terdhead)
0.1 col redtail boa (Dixie-my baby girl)
0.1 ball python (Bella- wifey's baby girl)

hopeful for not to distant future:
--brazillian rainbow boas 1 female for sure
2 or 3? maybe a breeding pair?

more distant future hopefuls
1 or 2 of each maybe a breeding pair?
--anery boa (ooooh)
--jungle carpet python (love to have 1 or 2)
--dumeril boa (ahhhh)

slightly more wishful thinking
--hypo br rainbow boa (love em)
--anery br rainbow boa (oooh even better!!)
--motely boa (gorgeous!!)

A lot of things to cover here. First and foremost is to really emphasize what MarkG said and say that there is quite a difference in water resistance of the melamine foil product you get at Home Depot vs. a 80 to 120 weight thermofused melamine you can buy at a specialty lumber yard or a cabinet shop.

Still, even the best 120 weight melamine is not an ideal finish for a Coastal Carpet Python. If you were to use it I would still recommend covering the floor and first few inches of the cage walls with some sort of more durable product. And here I agree with another poster who recommended putting it on before assembly. If you have access to a lot of tools then simply put whatever you use on oversized and then trim it to fit exactly with a router.

In addition to vinyl flooring, FRP, Sintra or other sign boards and high pressure laminate also work well.

I still think melamine is a great choice for these types of situations simply because the upper cage walls and cage exterior are already finished and look pretty good. I also really like the semi-matte finish of black melamine and think snakes look great against it. It is heavy but the pre-finished nature make it well worth it, IMO. And the cost savings are impressive, especially if you can find some free or cheap vinyl flooring. I have never paid for vinyl flooring I used in a reptile cage.

For assembly, my #1 choice is confirmat screws or a knock off of them used along with Roo glue or another melamine specific glue. If you don't care to buy the special bit for confirmat screws then dados & rabbets are a second choice. Tied with that would be Roo glue plus whatever screws you might have lying around, with extra care taking to not split the material.

One other thing about melamine is the precut shelves that are available. You can often build a cage with minimal cutting. These precut shelves are nice because 1) they are usually a high quality, 100 weight melamine, 2) the edges come prefinished with edge tape and done much better than you can do at home & 3) they care CNC cut and are perfectly square and sized exactly the same - the precut plywood panels you have seen locally are probably cut on a panel saw and not nearly as accurate.

Onto plywood...

Plywood is also a great choice but anything flat and smooth enough to be worth using is going to be more expensive than melamine and still require additional finishing. And this finishing would be required for both the interior AND exterior of the cage. But it is lighter, stronger and does look very nice when finished well.

The Envirotex Lite and other bar-top epoxies are nice but expensive and can be fussy to work with. I happen to like it but some keepers who have tried it have ruined cages, likely due to improper mixing. I have bought it at Menards, Ace Hardware and at craft stores. If you only have one cage to seal the craft stores are a good place to buy as they tend to sell partial kits instead of full gallons.

The downfall to these epoxies is the price and the fact they have to be applied quite thick, making them even more expensive as you need more of it per square foot. I can go into choices for sealing plywood more if you decide to go that way.

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Currently keeping a small collection of various Gonyosoma. Both G. janseni and G. oxycephala.

i doubt im gonna be adopting the coastal, but had planned to get something at the midwest show, prolly end up buying 4 or 5 females balls or a couple baby jcps or coastals, ive got plenty of quarantine caging here so well see what i end up getting, but whatever permanent caging i build most likely it will be plywood with linoleum silicone, if i buy the balls ill end up just buying some 29 gallons later and stacking them on the side like i have my bloods