TheOddBall

With all the babies that will be hacthing later this summer, I decided that I needed another rack. The rack below will hold 55 of the 6 qt sterilite containers. The 6 qt containers are perfect to house virtually any baby snake in. I have kept my baby ball pythons in them for years with great success.

Materails:

• Table Saw
• Screws- 3/4 inch
• Screw Driver
• plywood or melamine boards
• casters
• one 10 foot 2 by 4
• Nails
• coroplast plastic (for the back of the rack)

Step 1: Cut the boards to size. The boards used below are 40 inches long by 15 inches wide. You can always buy precut boards from Lowes of Home Depot. I would not have had to cut them, but the boards I was using were not all the length originally.

  

 Step 2: 

What I did next was build the base of the rack. This is where the 2 by 4 came in. The dimensions of the base are 40 by 15. I nailed the 2 by 4 pieces together.

 

Step 3:

Next I added a piece of melamine to the top of the base. I nailed the board to the base frame.

Step 4:

I decided that I would go ahead and add castors to the rack now. I figured it would be easier to do this than wait until the end of the project. This is the first time I have added casters to any rack!

 

 

Step 5:

After the castors were done, I added the 2 sidewalls to the rack. I used some plywood. The walls are just screwed to the base. The overall height of the rack is 62 inches tall. I should have gone a little taller!

Step 7:

This is where the fun starts: adding the levels, one by one. I used 5 6 qt tubs with a piece of coroplast underneath it as spacers. None of the tubs stick and there is not enough room for a baby ball to escape through the gap.

More levels…I made sure each level was functional before going to the next one. The thing you don’t want to find out is that the first or second level is too tight to tub a tub once you are finished!

Step 8:

Once the levels were done, I added two braces to the front to keep the rack from sagging, which can happen over time. To attach them, I nailed the braces to each level.

Step 9:

I screwed the coroplast on the back of the rack.I used several old campaign signs which I had in the storage shed. Those come in handy for a variety of things.

Finished: 

I put some paint on the rack and there it it:

Here is another pic with it full of tubs:

Hopefully this will help any of you who are wanting to make a rack! Over the years I have made many racks and the amount of money I save is tremendous. A similar rack to the one I just built would cost several hundred dollars easily. Let me know if you have any questions when building!