Sunday, December 27, 2015

Bearded Dragons Terrarium Pedestal

Santa Claus arranged for two new family members: Artemis and Apollo, two bearded dragons. They moved into our house with a large terrarium.

However, it turns out that the large terrarium will need more proper landscaping than Santa Claus had set up, before it becomes a nice living space for Artemis and Apollo. So for now the two live in temporary housing on our dining table.

While we hash out where exactly in the house the dragons are going to live permanently, Pascal and I built a sturdy pedestal for the large terrarium.  We used a bunch of wood left over from other projects (mostly 2x4's and plywood), so the pedestal has a somewhat utilitarian look, but that's alright with us.

We started by making a plan. Primarily, so that we both agreed on what we were talking about. The frame was to be made from 2x4's and legs attached with plywood gussets. Of course, the plan changed when construction began. Nevertheless, a little while later we had made something that had a faint resemblance with the thing in the drawing.

We tested stability and fit by putting the large terrarium on the frame, and realized that ~1mm tolerance when cutting wood is not tight enough for this kind of project, not even talking about the slight warp in the 2x4 beams. I'm still amazed that they're building whole houses from this stuff ...

However, since the terrarium is quite heavy from the glass alone, it pushed the wood into position and we just had a little wobble to deal with due to some slight remaining warping in the beams.

Looking pretty good already. The dragons are getting anxious to move into their new home, but we're not quite done yet.

Since the terrarium will be filled with sand and stones (easily another 150+ lbs), I was worried that the bottom glass pane won't be able to support the weight just from its edges where it is glued with the other glass panes. With the terrarium still in place we cut three more cross-members, raised them to the bottom glass pane, and screwed them to the frame, so that the terrarium floor is well supported.

Finally, we added a fir trim along the edges of the pedestal, so that the terrarium can't slide off in any direction. It's highly unlikely that it is going to move anyways, but the trim also hides some exposed rough cut surfaces of the wood we used.

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