The Rack That Nearly Got Away - Free Build!

[jimmus]

I made this rack a few years ago for my corn snakes but thought it might be useful for others looking to build a rack for their snakes, on the cheap!!

I came across an old bed (the wooden ones, with wooden slats to hold up the matress) in my garage that I had been meaning to 'dump' for a long time. As i was loading the bed into the car I thought 'I could make a rack out of this!!'.

After a rummage round the garage i managed to scrape together a handfull of screws, an old hack saw (not designed for wood), a tape measure, pencil and an electric screwdriver which had some battery life left woooo. I was ready to begin, and what a typically beautiful day it was too....



Here's what i started with.



I made measurements with the tape measure, using the edge of the metal strip as a ruler lol. I had to remove some staples from the wood then it was time to get the old eleccy screwdriver out...



Oooh its slowly taking shape.






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[jimmus]

Uh oh. I ran out of screws of the ideal size so had to improvise. The 'new' screws were too short, therefore i had to drill starter holes with the screwdriver attachment of the drill so that the screws would penetrate the bottom piece of wood far enough to keep things sturdy.

Turns out this method actually looked better lol.



Three hours later and 'Voila', one small, very shabby, wonky rack (I take that last comment back, its not the rack thats wonky its my house...honest!!). Bases will be required on each level before it would be useable!






As i mentioned above i could not use the rack due to the gaps between the support planks on each shelf being too far apart to place heat mats. I therefore had to come up with a plan. I managed to find an old sheet of really thin laminated wood. After measuring i realised there wasn't enough to complete all 4 shelves. I ended up using it anyway, after all i only needed the wood as support for the heatmats which only take up about a quater or a third of each shelf. I secured the sheets of wood with 4 screws, one in each corner as this seemed adequate.

Heres out it came out, ta-da...



Here are a couple of pics with the rack decked out with my snakes.




A sunday well spent. This rack cost me absoultely nothing to build apart from backache and a few sore fingers.

Thanks for looking

Cheers

[joeyboy]

wow fab lol, I need someone like you in Nottingham to build me a shelving unit for RUBS and some glass tanks.

[jimmus]

LOL, well i can only make ReallyUsefulThings for RUBs out of your furniture, if your willing to sacrifice your sofa and a few doors then we have a deal!!

[joeyboy]

Originally Posted by jimmus

LOL, well i can only make ReallyUsefulThings for RUBs out of your furniture, if your willing to sacrifice your sofa and a few doors then we have a deal!!

haha no lol, I'm just going to have to find a carpenter and hope they don't charge a bomb for a shelving unit, unfortunately the ones at ikea,argos etc aren't the right sizes.

[jimmus]

AH no that sucks. Well good luck anyways dude.

[wayakinwolf]

Great job with that build mate, well done

[iangreentree]

nice job mate if you guy want one almost built look at the canvas wardrobes in the Argos book

[Pleco07]

That looks well good, nice job mate

My bed is one with slats and its on its way out, mite have to recycle it.

[chondro13]

haha! thats fantastic!!