DIYcages B grades anyone buy them?

northcham

New Member
I have been looking for screen cages to try out for a few of my reptiles and see DIYcages has some discounted as B grades due to a teflon smell and misplaced screw holes mostly. From what I have read there cages are good quality usualy and I plan to buy a couple to try but before I do has anyone bought any of the discounted ones? Or have any advice on the teflon smell being bad, I know it is for birds if it gets burnt?
 
I love diycages and was considering buying several of the b grade but what stopped me was the teflon smell in the spline. I talked to the guy about this and I would have to respline the cages once they got here. That just sounded like a huge PITA and I decided not to get them
 
The only way I can see to do that would be pull the spline out a couple of inches and roll in a new spline behind that. It would be a tedious task.
 
Any time i see cages i always think to myself... I could build one so much better. So if you have a little time and the tools i would suggest a custom build. There are a lot of plans right on this website. Here is one that I have used: https://www.chameleonforums.com/cage-plans-2x2x5ft-wooden-cage-33813/

Its a pretty easy cage to do. I made mine with a few changes but that's the beauty of it, if your going along with the build and you have an idea you can always try it out. Good Luck!
 
i was going to get the b grade ones b/c i need 6 of their small ones but they didn't have any in the small size. i thought he said he was actually going to get them re-splined so the smell wouldn't be an issue and the only issue are lining up the screw holes. that was a few weeks ago so maybe he changed his mind.
 
The spline is the plastic that holds in the screen in the groove right? I resplined the lid of an exo terra a long time ago due to rust, and even putting in regular window screen was a huge PITA I dont want to think of how hard putting in metal screen would be, I ruined the original metal screen just getting it out. I was not told the teflon smell was in just the spline but more the whole cage and that it would disapate in a few days if put outside? Is this what others were told? I guess I should ask him about it.
 
The spline is the plastic that holds in the screen in the groove right? I resplined the lid of an exo terra a long time ago due to rust, and even putting in regular window screen was a huge PITA I dont want to think of how hard putting in metal screen would be, I ruined the original metal screen just getting it out. I was not told the teflon smell was in just the spline but more the whole cage and that it would disapate in a few days if put outside? Is this what others were told? I guess I should ask him about it.

The guy told me that regardless of putting them outside the smell would persist if the spline was not replaced. Theorectically, if you were able to pull a couple inches of spline at a time and keep the screen in the groove you could just roll in the new spline behind that. If you tried to take the spline completely out first you would not be able to keep the screen that came with it. It would be too difficult to get the screen to stretch back to the original size without any extra on the edge to hold onto.
 
Well the cage shipped out today.....I hope the smell will disapate if I am not up to replacing the spline! I am sure he said at first that just leaving it outside a few days would take care of a lot of the smell. He also said resplining was easier with a "spline fish", which I have never heard of? He also mentioned to watch the fumes....
 
You should be able to find a resplining tool at any hardware store for relatively cheap. It may be a good investment if you plan on resplining any screen cages. I have one that I inherited after my parents redid all their windows and screen doors. It looks like a pizza cutter type thing with a groove in the wheel.
 
I have a spline tool here somewere, the guy at DIY smeed to be talking about a diffrent type of tool for resplining then the usual one, and yes it does look like a pizza cutter lol.
 
I have been looking for screen cages to try out for a few of my reptiles and see DIYcages has some discounted as B grades due to a teflon smell and misplaced screw holes mostly. From what I have read there cages are good quality usualy and I plan to buy a couple to try but before I do has anyone bought any of the discounted ones? Or have any advice on the teflon smell being bad, I know it is for birds if it gets burnt?

I would avoid anything that is giving off fumes, especially noticable (to the limited human nose) fumes.
 
As for the smell of the rubber spline....

You can get around the fumes by coating the splined area with ge silicone II. The silicone can be done neatly with some time and alot quicker than resplining.
 
I should have tried bidding on one first if the trting bid is just $20, I paid $51 for the one I ordered, I awalays check ebay usualy too!

Siliconing around it is a great idea if the smell is just from the spline, I think I will try that on one of the frames first too see how much silicone it would take. I get the feeling this cage might cost more to fix then I saved buying it:(
 
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