Some time ago after watching Ralph Davis' youtube videos, I decided to use his idea of putting conduit pipe on the front of a rack to prevent any strong snakes from pushing out. Recently I decided to make it more useful, as a burglary prevention tool. I've been thinking of a way to lock the pipe in place for some time, and yesterday the simplicity of it finally hit me.

You can see the pipes here, on the racks on the left, the melamine ones.

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb251/pwilliams58/87d0a6f5.jpg

If anyone doesn't understand the concept, Ralph explain's it nicely in this video starting around 7:40.

YouTube - Heating Snake Racks - part 2

Well, here's what I did.

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb251/pwilliams58/017fd7f3.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb251/pwilliams58/58961d53.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb251/pwilliams58/564992fa.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb251/pwilliams58/a6bb1bf4.jpg

This lock, prevents anyone from being about to lift the pipe out of the brackets holding it in, and thus prevents any tubs from being able to be opened. The pipe obviously has some play, moves up and down a little, but I have enough excess at the bottom it is not a problem.

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb251/pwilliams58/8f7b0be9.jpg

I chose this particular type of combination lock because you can set the combination of your choice, and can make all your racks the same combo, so this prevents you from having to hide keys around your house, or remember a slew of digits for each lock.

Yes, of course this is not foolproof, you can unscrew the brackets, and remove it that way, or, you could pull the rack away from the wall, tip it up slightly and be able to slide the pipe out of the top bracket. My solutions to these two problems are, to cover the screw heads with an ultra-hard epoxy resin, so a screwdriver or drill cannot fit into the hole on the screw, and to prevent the rack tipping, I have screwed all my racks together, so theyre basically one big rack which would be very hard for one person pull away from the wall and tip (those screws used to screw the racks together would also be covered in epoxy). Yes, even these ideas are still not foolproof, but it would make it pretty hard for one person to steal anything, without taking alot of time, and using some power tools.

I don't know, I may just be paranoid, I may have over thought this, but since I already had the pipes in place, I figured this was the least I could do to further protect my high dollar animals, and my mother couldn't be more thrilled that the snakes are safely locked away and none can escape! She even offered to pay for more locks so I can finish doing this on all my racks! And in case anyone is wondering, this costs about $10 per rack.

Let me know what you guys think!

melamine is pretty easy to break... it wouldnt take much force to pull the bar and brackets out of the melamine. Sorry

melamine is pretty easy to break... it wouldnt take much force to pull the bar and brackets out of the melamine. Sorry

Yeah, likely, but on my wooden cb-70 racks it may be a different story...oh well, like I said, of course its not fool proof and you can get around anything I can put on this with sufficient time and tools.

If someone wants it that bad they will get it, all we can do is try to keep them there longer working on it so we have a chance to catch and torture them...lol

Looks good nice thinking :cheers:

I put a bit of thought into this subject a while back, and mostly came up with an idea along the same lines as you have but for a metal rack. There's not a ton you can do with wood racks as the wood will be your weakest point, but I do have a couple suggestions to improve on your design.

First of all is the conduit. Most of the conduit I've run across is pretty easy to bend by hand -- put a good kink in the middle of it and you can pull it right out of your brackets.

You're pretty limited on what you can do to secure the brackets to melamine. My suggestion would be to use the longest screws you're comfortable with putting into 3/4" melamine without breaking through the top or bottom. The longer the screw is, the tougher it'll be to pull out. You can also put wood glue on the threads before you screw them in.

Next up is the brackets themselves. You've got the upper one locked in place pretty good, the padlock won't allow it to go far. If you cap off the bottom of the lower bracket that'll make leaning the racks back worthless as they'd have to punch the rod through steel to take them out that way.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who's paranoid about someone trying to steal our animals. :cheers:

cool concept but yeah I agree still wouldnt be hard for them to get into it. I have a locked room inside a locked house and know it owuldnt stop anyone if they really wanted it. But im not to worried yet highest dollor snake I ahve is a 1K snake right now.

nice job and idea. I was thinking of doing something similar. I like the padlock idea too.

Nice post. May help me if I decide to get a retic and need a lock on it.



And screw you Florida regulations!

If someone wants it that bad they will get it, all we can do is try to keep them there longer working on it so we have a chance to catch and torture them...lol

Looks good nice thinking :cheers:

That's true. You can try to make it enough of a hassle to steal that they won't bother. However, a thief may see that setup and think "those things must be gold!".

I don't think the wood is the weak link. It's the tubs. Wouldn't stand up to a box knife. Would have to cut into each tub though.

It is a nice idea and if it makes mom more comfortable it's a good thing.

looks like a good idea, might have to try it out to keep the kids out.

I don't think the wood is the weak link. It's the tubs. Wouldn't stand up to a box knife. Would have to cut into each tub though.



That's what I was thinking too. If someone went in there intending to steal them they'd have to know something of what they were worth and cutting out that plastic wouldn't take long at all. Hell, if they were really smart they'd just bring a hot knife and cut em..... Sorry man, seems like it would work great to stop a snake getting out but if a person wanted to get IN it's a different story.

It will keep an honest person honets.... that is all.