Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Finally got around to finishing my new snake cages. Actually, they've been finished for a while, I've just been too lazy to get the pictures together. The current ones kinda suck. Sorry!

The design is pretty basic: black 3/4" thick melamine was the primary material, held together with Confirmat-style screws and RooClear glue. PVC banding on all exposed edges. Doors are 1/4" thick plate glass, sliding in plastic tracks from Rockler. The lips are about 3" high. Lighting is via GE flourescent fixtures, with electronic ballasts. Heating is via Helix heat panels controlled by Helix proportional thermostats (one per stack). There's a heavy bead of caulk around the floor, to prevent water from damaging the melamine.

The cages on the ends are 42" wide, 24.75" deep, and 18" tall. The middle cages are 30" wide but the same in every other dimension. The cages sit on platforms that are the same width and depth as the cages, but only 5" tall. The platforms are mounted on heavy-duty 4" casters. Sides of the platforms are black melamine, but the top and bottom are 3/4" plywood. Some of it is agathis and I think some was birch; whatever I had lying around that was cheap. Platforms were assembled using Confirmat screws and Titebond wood glue. Put black edge-banding on the plywood, so that it looks just like the melamine. Internally, the platforms have plywood or melamine braces that run from the back to the front. The cages are HEAVY, so I wanted some reinforcement there.

The cage stacks are held in place using dowels. Each cage/platform, except the top, has four 3/8" dowels inserted in holes at each corner. The dowels protrude about 3/8" from the top of the cage. There are matching, but slightly larger, holes drilled in the bottom of each cage to receive the dowels from the cage underneath. This allows some slight movement if you push on the middle or top cage, but it also means that you don't have to be super-accurate when drilling the holes and positioning the dowels.

Aside from the insane weight, which I expected, I think the whole thing turned out pretty well. The black melamine looks cool and makes the snake's colors really "pop". It's also very easy to clean and cut down on the time required to complete the project significantly (since it didn't need to be finished). The 3" lip at the top and bottom of the cage work pretty well, but a small amount of substrate still finds it's way into the tracks on occasion. Another 1/2" to 1" might have worked better, though it would have made the opening a bit too narrow for my tastes.

Total cost was, well, pretty insane. Melamine was cheap. Around $28 for a 4'x8' sheet. I think I used about 8.5 sheets to make all of the cages and the platforms. I built the cages in three separate stages; might have saved a little money on melamine if I'd done everything at once as I could have optimized the cut layout a bit better. Used the better part of a sheet of plywood (plus some extra?) for the tops and bottoms of the carts. Glass track was about $10/cage. Heat panels were $55/cage. Lighting fixtures were $35-40/cage. Used 12 casters, at a cost of around $16-18/ea, 3-4 tubes of caulk, a bottle of RooClear glue, and more than 100 Confirmat screws. I also broke two expensive ($25) stepped drill bits for the Confirmat screws before I figured out that the drill and countersink for a standard #10 screw would work almost as well. I bought two 250-foot rolls of iron-on edge-banding at $30-something a roll. Still have a bunch of edge-banding left over, but I'd have had a lot more if my puppy hadn't managed to chew on both rolls! Locks were $8-9/ea.

FYI, I used CutList Plus to layout the parts and come up with a cutting diagram. If anyone wants the files, let me know.

Those are some very nice looking cages! You should definitely be proud of them. Those are showcase quality for sure!! Looks like your snakes will be happy.

So what was the overall total cost for all the cages combined? Just curious.

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MichaelRehker
"Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?"
--Marianne Moore

>>So what was the overall total cost for all the cages combined? Just curious.

I really didn't keep track... And, I have to admit, I'm a bit frightened to know. If you figure one sheet of melamine ($28.50), one radiant heat panel ($55), one light fixture ($35?), glass ($25), and door tracks ($11) you're at $154.50 per cage. I built nine, so that's $1390.50. Plus, there's $300 worth of thermostats (that I already owned).

The carts are probably $50-60 worth of wood and $215 worth of heavy-duty casters. So that's another $275. Each cart has a timer for the lights ($15 x 3 = $45), and a heavy-duty power strip ($12x3=$36).

So, at this point we've got $2041.50. And you still need to add, caulk, edge-banding ($60), Confirmat screws ($15?) and the stupid drill bits that I broke ($50). So $2,166.50 plus whatever caulk costs. And I'm sure there's some other stuff I forgot.

Anyway, the average cost was around $240.72/cage. Yikes! But heating, lights, and thermostats are more than half ($123.33) of that cost!

very nice. good lookin cages!

By the way, what is cut list plus?
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-Chris

The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?

My Website
Rat/Corn snake care sheet I wrote

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds (Jose and Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)
1.0 Green Tree Python (Claudius)... coming soon

>>By the way, what is cut list plus?

CutList Plus is a program that helps you figure out how to cut a large piece of wood into a bunch of smaller pieces of wood.

You can put in the dimensions of all of your cage pieces and it will tell you the best way to cut up a 4'x8' sheet of plywood to get those pieces. There are several different modes: it can optimize the amount of leftover material, minimize the number of cross cuts, minimize the number of rip cuts, and so on. You can also put in a large list of parts and it will tell you how much wood you need to buy to make all of those parts. If you have leftover wood, you can put in the size of the leftovers and it will make use of them, too.

A pretty cool program, though expensive. I do a lot of woodworking, aside from cage building, so it's a real time-saver for me. FYI, the freeware version is sufficient for small projects.
CutList Plus

Those are truly some of the nicest cages I've seen on this forum to date. As to your comments about the insane weight - I've found that even though really heavy cages are often cursed when it comes to moving time, they often hold up much better in the long run than more flimsy counterparts might. Again, congrats on making some very nice very high quality cages.
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Matt Campbell
Animal Keeper, Small Mammal/Reptile House
Lincoln Park Zoo Chicago, Illinois

Assistant Curator
Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, Illinois

>>Those are truly some of the nicest cages I've seen on this forum to date. As to your comments about the insane weight - I've found that even though really heavy cages are often cursed when it comes to moving time, they often hold up much better in the long run than more flimsy counterparts might. Again, congrats on making some very nice very high quality cages.

Thanks for the compliments. We'll have to see how well the cages hold up over time... The design is definitely solid (I weight close to 200lb and sat on the cages to make sure they would hold). Particleboard, which is essentially what melamine is, isn't as solid as plywood. That, combined with it's greater weight, may mean that they don't do as well over time as a plywood cage would. We'll see.

For anyone not familiar with melamine, a 4'x8' sheet of 3/4" thick melamine probably weighs close to 100lbs. Each of the larger cages used almost an entire sheet. So the large cage stacks probably weigh 300lbs (or more)! Just rolling the carts around on carpet can be a chore...

How do you like the rhp's?

>>How do you like the rhp's?

The Helix radiant heat panels are pretty nice. I bought the smallest (= cheapest) size available. On cold days, they pretty much run constantly to keep the cages at the temps I need. Not sure what effect that will have on their lifetime. A larger panel probably wouldn't run as much, but would add significantly to the cost.

Obviously, the RHP generates less heat the further away you are from the panel. The 18" height of these cages seems to work pretty well. I'd be concerned that the floor of a 24" high cage might be pretty cool is you used the same size panel I did...

>>Finally got around to finishing my new snake cages.

Great job. I love the look of black melamine.

I see Carpet Pythons, are they housing other species as well.

>>The design is pretty basic: black 3/4" thick melamine was the primary material...

Did you special order the black melamine? If so, was it through a home improvment center or a speciality store?

>>...held together with Confirmat-style screws and RooClear glue.

I've thought about trying those Confirmat screws but after reading about your issues I think I'll stick with normal square drive screws.

But for what it is worth, I generally find it is worth the money to buy a nice counter-sink bit. Just make sure the bit can be replaced with a normal stock size and not a proprieatary product.

The cheap ones work fine but over time the lock screw holding the bit in place strips or something and you cannot replace the bit.

>>The cages on the ends are 42" wide, 24.75" deep, and 18" tall. I built the cages in three separate stages; might have saved a little money on melamine if I'd done everything at once as I could have optimized the cut layout a bit better.

>>FYI, I used CutList Plus to layout the parts and come up with a cutting diagram. If anyone wants the files, let me know.

I'm confused. You say you could have saved money if you had opitmized the layout, but then say you used a program.

Are you saying you should have used different dimensions?

No big deal, just curious.
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Current snakes:

1.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.4 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

>>I see Carpet Pythons, are they housing other species as well.

I have a pair of Irian Jaya carpet pythons, a jungle carpet, an olive python, a ball python, a boa constrictor and some womas

>>Did you special order the black melamine? If so, was it through a home improvment center or a speciality store?

I buy sheet goods from a place called Plywood and Lumber Sales in San Jose, California. They cater to professional cabinet shops, so they have white, black, almond, and oak melamine in stock in a variety of thicknesses. Their prices tend to be much better than Home Depot or lumber yards and they have better selection and quality, too!

Chances are, there's a similar shop in any large metropolitan area. It's just a matter of finding it!

>>I've thought about trying those Confirmat screws but after reading about your issues I think I'll stick with normal square drive screws.

FWIW, the Confirmat screws and RooClear glue hold extremely well! The stepped bits are a little delicate, but really not that bad. I broke them because I was in a hurry, got careless, and applied too much sideways force to the drill after it was already half-way into the pilot hole...

>>But for what it is worth, I generally find it is worth the money to buy a nice counter-sink bit. Just make sure the bit can be replaced with a normal stock size and not a proprieatary product.
>>
>>The cheap ones work fine but over time the lock screw holding the bit in place strips or something and you cannot replace the bit.

Yeah, I have some pilot drills and counter-sink attachments from Lee Valley that seem to work pretty well. The hole they drill isn't quite big enough for the cap on the Confirmat screw, but if you've got a drill with some torque (or an impact driver) it will twist the screw the extra half-turn necessary to make the head flush with the melamine.

>>I'm confused. You say you could have saved money if you had opitmized the layout, but then say you used a program.
>>
>>Are you saying you should have used different dimensions?

I built the cages in three stages. Basically, one "stack" at a time: three cages plus one cart. After finishing one stack, I'd buy more melamine and supplies, then start on the next stack.

The program optimized the layout for each stack. Even so, I did end up with some left-over melamine in a variety of useful and not so useful sizes. If I'd built all of the cages and all of the carts at one time, I wouldn't have ended up with as many off-cuts and I might have been able to buy one less sheet of melamine. Basically, the optimization of the entire project as a whole would have been slightly more efficient than optimizing the three different stages individually.

For financial and practical reasons, the staged approach was the way to go even if I spent a bit more money on wood. I didn't have the space to store 8-9 sheets of melamine. And, at around 100lbs sheet, I certainly didn't want to have to load and unload them all either

>>I have a pair of Irian Jaya carpet pythons, a jungle carpet, an olive python, a ball python, a boa constrictor and some womas

Ironic, just yesterday I just got to see my first Woma of that "starburst" morph or whatever they call it. I was blown away. I also got to play around with my friend's Olive Pythons. I've seen them before, of course, but never had a huge tame specimen in my hand. They are simply fantastic snakes.

>>The program optimized the layout for each stack... For financial and practical reasons, the staged approach was the way to go even if I spent a bit more money on wood.

Ah yes, that makes total sense. The melamine was hardly the cost limiting factor here, obviously, so it make sense what you did.

I read in another post your concerns re. durability. I think you'll be fine. If you start to see bubbling issues with the melamine just get some 1/8" expanded PVC (black) and line the floor and sides with it. Your cages will last forever that way.

Melamine varies greatly in quality. The stuff you got may last forever, even without the PVC.

BTW, I also like your method of using dowels to "lock" the cages together. I've played around with using plastic bisquits (no glue) and that works pretty well.
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Current snakes:

1.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.4 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

>>Finally got around to finishing my new snake cages. Actually, they've been finished for a while, I've just been too lazy to get the pictures together. The current ones kinda suck. Sorry!
>>
>>The design is pretty basic: black 3/4" thick melamine was the primary material, held together with Confirmat-style screws and RooClear glue. PVC banding on all exposed edges. Doors are 1/4" thick plate glass, sliding in plastic tracks from Rockler. The lips are about 3" high. Lighting is via GE flourescent fixtures, with electronic ballasts. Heating is via Helix heat panels controlled by Helix proportional thermostats (one per stack). There's a heavy bead of caulk around the floor, to prevent water from damaging the melamine.
>>
>>The cages on the ends are 42" wide, 24.75" deep, and 18" tall. The middle cages are 30" wide but the same in every other dimension. The cages sit on platforms that are the same width and depth as the cages, but only 5" tall. The platforms are mounted on heavy-duty 4" casters. Sides of the platforms are black melamine, but the top and bottom are 3/4" plywood. Some of it is agathis and I think some was birch; whatever I had lying around that was cheap. Platforms were assembled using Confirmat screws and Titebond wood glue. Put black edge-banding on the plywood, so that it looks just like the melamine. Internally, the platforms have plywood or melamine braces that run from the back to the front. The cages are HEAVY, so I wanted some reinforcement there.
>>
>>The cage stacks are held in place using dowels. Each cage/platform, except the top, has four 3/8" dowels inserted in holes at each corner. The dowels protrude about 3/8" from the top of the cage. There are matching, but slightly larger, holes drilled in the bottom of each cage to receive the dowels from the cage underneath. This allows some slight movement if you push on the middle or top cage, but it also means that you don't have to be super-accurate when drilling the holes and positioning the dowels.
>>
>>Aside from the insane weight, which I expected, I think the whole thing turned out pretty well. The black melamine looks cool and makes the snake's colors really "pop". It's also very easy to clean and cut down on the time required to complete the project significantly (since it didn't need to be finished). The 3" lip at the top and bottom of the cage work pretty well, but a small amount of substrate still finds it's way into the tracks on occasion. Another 1/2" to 1" might have worked better, though it would have made the opening a bit too narrow for my tastes.
>>
>>Total cost was, well, pretty insane. Melamine was cheap. Around $28 for a 4'x8' sheet. I think I used about 8.5 sheets to make all of the cages and the platforms. I built the cages in three separate stages; might have saved a little money on melamine if I'd done everything at once as I could have optimized the cut layout a bit better. Used the better part of a sheet of plywood (plus some extra?) for the tops and bottoms of the carts. Glass track was about $10/cage. Heat panels were $55/cage. Lighting fixtures were $35-40/cage. Used 12 casters, at a cost of around $16-18/ea, 3-4 tubes of caulk, a bottle of RooClear glue, and more than 100 Confirmat screws. I also broke two expensive ($25) stepped drill bits for the Confirmat screws before I figured out that the drill and countersink for a standard #10 screw would work almost as well. I bought two 250-foot rolls of iron-on edge-banding at $30-something a roll. Still have a bunch of edge-banding left over, but I'd have had a lot more if my puppy hadn't managed to chew on both rolls! Locks were $8-9/ea.
>>
>>FYI, I used CutList Plus to layout the parts and come up with a cutting diagram. If anyone wants the files, let me know.
>>
>>
>>
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**********************************
Tim W.

i forgot to put that in the last post
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**********************************
Tim W.

I got the locks from Woodworkers Hardware. Look under 'Cabinet Locks' then 'Specialty Locks'. I believe they are the Polished Nickel ratchet locks (KV0965NP) for $7.05/ea. The picture currently on their website looks a little different from the lock I have. I paid $5.98 for those locks, so it looks like the price has gone up!

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend the locks I used. They're a pain. In order to remove the lock, you have to turn the key and keep it turned (it wants to spring back to the locked position) as you remove the locking mechanism. The locks I bought from Vision for use with my old Vision cages were much better: once you turn the key, the lock remains unlocked and the cylinder can easily be slid off the hasp with one hand. The ones I got from Woodworker's Hardware require two hands to lock and unlock the cage!

FYI, I also bought glass door pulls from Woodworkers Hardware. They're item 'EGP 17C'. They're the same 3M ones that Vision used to ship with. You just peel the paper off the back and attach the plastic pull to the door. They were $1.57 when I bought them; not sure how much they cost now.
Woodworker's Hardware

GREAT work!!! I have to admit, I am jealous as Hell!

Best regards,

Mike