Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I need a rack soon and can't find a cheap yet quality builder to buy from. I need to hold 8 28qt rubbermaid or sterilite containers heated for leopard geckos. The problem is I don't wanna dish out 225-300 dollars for one. Also, my dad and I aren't very good at building things considering we only have a jigsaw, a drill, and a skill saw. It would be a totaly different story we had a table saw, but we don't. Anyone who has ideas to what I can do, PLEAS LET ME KNOW! THANKS
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3.0 Hypo Tang Leos, 1.0 Blizzard Leo, 0.1 het Blizzard Leo, 2.1 Tremper Tang/Albino Leos, 1.0 Knight Anole, 0.1 Mali Uromastyx, 1.1 Green Iguana, 1.1 Ball Pythons, 1.0 Green Anole, a Common Snapping Turt, 1 Dark Fire/1 Normal Crested Geckos, 0.1 Columbian Red-Tail Boa
www.geocities.com/multiplemorphherpetoculture

A friend of mine is using the "drawer" type plastic box units sold at Walmart, etc. The plastic boxes are housed in a premade plastic housing unit. They may not be suitable for snakes due to lack of a tight fit, but he says they work great for leopard gex. He heats the units by running heat rope around the back of the unit. These are very affordable compared to professional rack systems. Check them out, you may be surprised!!

Good Luck
KevinM

You don't need a table saw. Just draw up your plans and figure out your dimensions. Home Depot and Lowes will cut all the pieces for you for free. Then all you will need is the drill you have and some screws to put it all together.

>>I need a rack soon and can't find a cheap yet quality builder to buy from. I need to hold 8 28qt rubbermaid or sterilite containers heated for leopard geckos. The problem is I don't wanna dish out 225-300 dollars for one. Also, my dad and I aren't very good at building things considering we only have a jigsaw, a drill, and a skill saw. It would be a totaly different story we had a table saw, but we don't. Anyone who has ideas to what I can do, PLEAS LET ME KNOW! THANKS

All you really need in order to build nice racks is a circular saw with a good blade and a decent drill...

As others have suggested, you can get most lumber yards to cut sheet goods down to size for you. If you get somebody who knows what they're doing, you'll get good results. If you get some minimum-wage stock boy... you may end up with stuff that won't fit together. I learned this the hard way!

Another possibility is to build a rack using pre-cut melamine shelving. My local Home Depot now carries quite a bit of this. It's designed for building bookshelves, closet organizers, etc. Boards come in standard widths (12, 16, 24 inches) with holes drilled in the sides (for mounting shelf supports; ignore these) as well as solid boards which can be used as shelves. Pretty easy to turn this stuff into a Markus Jayne-style rack with a circular saw or jig saw and a cordless drill. You might also want to check out Tony/artfan1's "Ladder Rack", which was built with standard sized shelving.

BTW, if you decide to go with melamine, you might want to look into using Confirmat-type screws to put everything together. I've had much better luck with these than particleboard screws or anything else I've found. You need a special bit to pre-drill the holes, but the results are worth it. McFeelys.com has them. I use the 7x50mm screws. A starter kit with drill bit, screws, driver bits, and screw caps is around $35.

Another option would be to try and find a local woodworking club. Somebody there might be willing you help you get everything cut to size using their tools. They could also help with design. In my experience, most woodworking folks are happy to help others. Use Google to search for 'Houston woodworking club' (substitute the name of your city or area for "Houston", of course).
Artfan1's Ladder Rack

With absolutely minimal woodworking skills and tools, I built a really nice melamine rack using pre-cut melamine from Lowe's. Sterilite makes a sweater box that is 23.5 inches long and 16.5 inches wide, which works perfectly.
Use two pieces 24"Wx48"L for the sides, and pieces 24"Wx36"W for the shelves - two boxes will fit on each shelf. You won't have to do any cutting. The whole thing was less than $150, and holds 16 or 18 boxes (can't remember off the top of my head). Took me a couple of hours to put together. Its very heavy when finished, though, so I would recommend putting it together in the room that you're going to keep it in!