Reptile terrarium with sliding front doors.

[Ken Garland]

Hello, I am in the design process for a reptile tank that will have two sliding lexan doors in the front.

I'm only working with wood that I have on hand as this is a temporary housing from now until January.

What I need help with figuring out are the corner pieces and how to work in the sliding doors.

Here is a front view of the current concept and a top view of the 4x4 cedar corner pieces that have a 1/2" deep cut for the support beams. I'm just not sure how to fasten them. Should I use pocket holes, or just use this cut design with dowels and wood glue, etc. I have no experience creating a mortise and tenon joint or dovetail.

HnFDHcR.png


The thick black lines around the frosted windows will be plastic rails that I route 1/8" grooves in.

The side wood panels will be OSB with all of the inside sprayed with plasti-dip for moisture protection.

Support boards are pine 2x4 with a 3x6 board just under the windows on the front. The top is going to be a birch veneer plywood.

[Jerry Miner]

The rail ("beams" as you call them) -to-post connection can be made many ways. While I'm not a big fan of pocket screws for structural joints, I think you could use them successfully here (as the load on the joint would be small). Other options would include: dowels, mortise-and tenon, even a metal bracket like this:

table bracket

[Ken Garland]

The rail ("beams" as you call them) -to-post connection can be made many ways. While I'm not a big fan of pocket screws for structural joints, I think you could use them successfully here (as the load on the joint would be small). Other options would include: dowels, mortise-and tenon, even a metal bracket like this:

table bracket

Thanks for the suggestion, I should have mentioned that the corners will be exposed to moisture on the inside so metal wouldn't work as well over time.

I do need to start attempting mortises so perhaps this is a good project to try it on. Thanks for correcting me on the rails, I'm still learning a lot of terms.

[Ken Garland]

This is the basic structure I've come up with:
SkinkBoxSlides.jpg
There will be OSB on the outsides:
SkinkBoxSlidesOSB.jpg
Going to stick to using pocket holes on this structure.