building a rack?

[Henry]

I noticed a lot of people build their rack's with melemine. How come people dont use nice looking plywood. It would be lighter then melemine, and with a nice stain it would look nice.

[dr del]

Hi,

Well I suspect it has to do with the plastic coating on the melamine board.

This means you don't need to faff about sealing it against the humidity snake racks can be exposed to. Plus it comes in different colours ( I use the black stuff ) so you don't need to stain it to get a good colour match with certain room colour schemes. You might need iron on edging strip depending on your cuts though.

It is heavy though so putting it on wheels is a good idea - would plywood be any lighter?

I think the absolute best material would be the expanded plastic seeing as it is light and humidity resistant. Jglass38 made a nice rack out of it as have others.

It might be hard to source depending on your location of course and it probably isn't the cheapest option. Looks very nice though and should last a long time to boot.


dr del