Play Gym

[Cat]

Can someone please tell me the best type of wood to use for making a play gym for my Jade....i know that she would really love more to play with and i would feel better knowing that she's not getting bored while i'm out of the house

[Matridom]

I'm in the process of building one, I used 2 variety of woods, I used Russian Birch Plywood. It's a high quality plywood with a THICK birch vener on it. I'm using this as a base. The rest I'm making out of poplar wich is common at the lumber yard.

I'm using the plywood for the base and surrounding the edges with poplar strips. Standard dimensinal lumber (again poplar) is being used for the hanging parts of the playgym

From my research, both Birch and Poplar are safe woods.

Many people are having success with PVC pipes, i looked at that and thought that it did not offer enough flexibility for me.

[veryorignal]

Originally Posted by Matridom

I'm in the process of building one, I used 2 variety of woods, I used Russian Birch Plywood. It's a high quality plywood with a THICK birch vener on it. I'm using this as a base. The rest I'm making out of poplar wich is common at the lumber yard.

I'm using the plywood for the base and surrounding the edges with poplar strips. Standard dimensinal lumber (again poplar) is being used for the hanging parts of the playgym

From my research, both Birch and Poplar are safe woods.

Many people are having success with PVC pipes, i looked at that and thought that it did not offer enough flexibility for me.

u should post pics of your build

[CALVINS MOM]

Java wood and manzanita are two popular woods and are almost indestructable.

[Monica]

I don't know about Java, but any manzanita perches should be sanded down to provide the best grip for the bird. IME, the manzanita bark is far too smooth for a birds feet.

[jimpierce7]

I built my first one out of dowels from Home Depot. It worked great. In fact it still gets used.

[Cat]

thank you everyone for your advice, i'm always up for a challenge, i'm a disabled person and good with me hands, and i just want the best for my jade, if you have any pics of your gyms that i could see what way i should build it that would be really great thank you again

[BirdFace]

Manzanita is great for it's strength but I would get the sandblasted ones. Like Monica said the unsanded is too smooth and slippery. I went one step further and used a corse toothed metal file to carve tiny grooves into each branch and wrapped the sharp incline areas with jute twine.

[RickNCheri]

I found Manzanite to Slippery for Jessica as well. I used PVC for Her new Stand wrapped in that Anti-slip tape they use on walk ways and such. I have posted pic's of it in the past if you look for it.

[tielfan]

If you have the tools for it, you can shave off some of the manzanita bark. That's what they did on the play gym I bought for my tiels, and the shaved parts feel like lumber - completely non-slippery. The branches on the gym are relatively thick for cockatiels, but they don't have any trouble with it.