Sia Josephine - Building My Cat Wheel

@sia_josephine
The Adventures of Sia, Zuko & Richard Parker

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Building my cat wheel...

I've created this page to share my little journey on my cat wheel I made. I have a cat wheel made by One Fast Cat but I do not like the quality of the wheel so I started researching alternatives. On YouTube I came across a video of how to build one. I showed my Dad and he said it would be too big of an undertaking, so I became extra determined and had my husband buy a jigsaw and plywood for me the next day. It took a week to get everything cut and assembled and I surprised my Dad when he came over for a visit. Unfortunately, the plan for the base is not designed very well. The wheel just slides back and forth and rubs on the sides when it rolls. I had followed a comment in the video where somebody suggested adding garage door rollers in a vertical position. It wasn't working for me at all. Fortunately, my Dad owned tool companies for decades and is an amazing engineer. He was very excited to see my wheel and very surprised. I asked if he knew how I could get it to turn better and he said better garage door rollers with bearings, a stronger threaded rod (with these nuts and Hex Cap Nuts) along with support blocks under it, and extreme precision with the garage door rollers. He took the base home and went shopping for me. When he fixed it up and brought it back over, it was spinning sooo much better.

I'll share the additional products I used that weren't in the original design as well as what I would have done differently.

What I changed:

I scaled up my wheel by 10%. It was easiest to keep it all in millimeters like the plan but the depth I built in inches because the dowels worked out best to be 12" long.
Instead of 3/4" cheap OSB (which is really heavy), I used .5" sanded plywood so it wouldn't be rough.
The pattern calls for two pieces that go on the inside of the base sides and I ended up taking those out.
I altered the end pieces to go up higher in the middle so the cats can't climb in. It was scary seeing the big gap before I changed it where a cat could potentially go in and get seriously injured.
I originally had a regular threaded rod from Home Depot but my dad swapped it out for a re-enforced one.
Instead of carpet (which a cat can catch their claws on), I used foam sheets. I've used self-adhesive on my old wheel but I had to use regular foam sheets and glue them on because I couldn't find brown in self-adhesive.

Tools I used, Ryobi is affordable and they work well so I got a few of those:

Here is a list of the things I added:

Stain: Ebony and Special Walnut
Garage door rollers used as "bumpers" to prevent the wheel from shifting back and forth and rubbing on the base sides.
Extra screws along the outside edges of the wheel because there were some gaps along it.

What I would have done differently:

My husband bought me an orbital sander at the end. I wish I would have got that at the beginning, I sanded the rims by hand for a few hours and that would have saved me loads of time and made it smoother. I ended up completely re-sanding the edges of the rims at the end with the orbital sander.
I wish I would have used a miter saw on the straight edges of the wheel pieces. I cut them with a jigsaw and it would have been less sanding and more precise.

The plans:

Note: Some of the links on this page are Amazon affiliate links.