Reptile & Amphibian Forums

np

The urates and deficate of Burmese Pythons seems particuarly nasty from my experience. Because of that I'm not a big fan of melamine as seems to break down and bubble too much. Also it does not easily accept layers of paint, polyurethane, epoxies, etc. to make it more durable.

So I like plywood, specifically some of the cheaper grades of laminated plywoods from home improvement stores. They're relatively cheap, relatively straight, and very affordable. And they're smooth on two sides, meaning you won't have ugle knots or blemishes of a lower grade side to deal with. Plywood also holds screws and other fasteners very well. Better than the particle board interior of melamine (although even that is pretty good).

Cover the floor with some blemished vinyl flooring, linoleum, or formica for extra durability. The rest of the cage can be stained and polyurethaned (oil-based) or painted.

Big downfall to any Burmese cage is the tradeoff between making it durable yet also moveable. The few Burmese cages I've built would not fit through a typical door so they were more or less permanent.

What about MDO (medium-density overlay) in this situation? I haven't built a cage from it, but I undertand it's basically plywood with an MDF-like outer sheath. Designed to be used outdoors, so all of the glues/binders are waterproof/water-resistent. Not much to look at, but apparently easy to paint...

I don't like MDO. It usually is warped and frayed around the edges. Even if painted very thoroughly it still has a lot of surface area that is more difficult to clean and provides surface area for microbrial growth. When typical edge or butt joints are used with screws it does not hold them very well.

On top of that, the preserving agent that is used is fairly toxic. I'm not sure what that means to herps after it's "aged" for a while, however. But anyone who's cut a sheet has smelled the chemicals. Yuck.

I have heard MDO varied quite a bit as to which chemicals are used so take this at face value.

Another cheap plywood that probably would be good is fir CDX. It's pretty smooth on both sides and is not as warped as other plywoods. It is heavier than other plywoods, though and I feel the laminated products are with the extra money. That is assuming the prices have dropped after the effects of the east coast flood last fall.

I confused MDO with OSB. Two very different products. I have no experience with MDO.

>>On top of that, the preserving agent that is used is fairly toxic. I'm not sure what that means to herps after it's "aged" for a while, however. But anyone who's cut a sheet has smelled the chemicals. Yuck.

Yeah, well pretty much any man-made sheet good (plywood, OSB, MDO, melamine, MDF, particle board) is full of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen... According to the EPA, OSB actually emits less formaldehyde than many other presssed-wood products! Apparently, the stuff designed for external use uses a slightly different kind of binder, which doesn't outgas as quickly...

Right. Hence it's tendency to outgas over a longer period of time. But in general I don't worry much about the toxicity of products. Most are no more toxic that the materials we already have in our homes where the herps are anyways.

Regardless, there are better materials than OSB at a similar price. Not to mention that none of this related to MDO, the topic of your post. We probably should stop confusing people

If you are building big ones, you may want to use braces instead of nailing/screwing them together, would make them easier to move, as you would just have to remove the braces and reattach them.