Making a wheel

You will need:

• cake tin (at least 12″ in diameter)
• lazy susan turntable bearing
• drill
• rivet gun
• tape measure/ruler
• pen/pencil

Depending on how you attach the wheel to the cage you will also need:

• cable ties

or

• screwdriver
• screws
• washers
• wood

How to make the wheel:

1. Using a tape measure/ruler find the middle of tin on the outside, line up the lazy susan turntable bearing and mark where your holes will need to be 
2. Find out what size rivet fits in the holes of your lazy susan turntable bearing and using a drill make holes of the appropriate size where you have marked on the tin
3. If you are attaching the bearing from outside the tin go on the step 4, otherwise now is the time to attach the bearing to the piece of wood (this will need to be a few centimetres wider than the bearing so the wood doesn’t split when you screw in to it, but shouldn’t be wider than the wheel so that it doesn’t get chewed at).
4. Place the rivet through the hole in the tin and the bearing and use the rivet gun to attach the two together. This takes a fair amount of force.
5. File down any sharp edges you may have if the rivet didn’t break of smoothly and your wheel is ready to be attached to the cage, do this either with cable ties or if you have a piece of wood attached to the wheel use the screws and washers.

Reasons you might want to make your own wheel:

• You can make sure the wheel is a suitable size
• The wheel will have a solid base and back
• Most commercially available wheels are made of plastic which will be chewed and need replacing

Choosing a cake tin: The tin will need to be at least 12″ in diameter so that your pets spine isn’t damaged, I went with a 13″ tin as this is the largest I could fit through the cage door. The tin should not be covered in anything such as teflon that will come off when chewed, iron or steel will rust when it gets damp (read: when it gets peed on), the tin here is anodised aluminium.

The original guide I followed used a 3″ lazy susan turntable bearing, this has to be attached to the tin from the outside which meant that it wasn’t possible to attach a piece of wood or anything to make it easier to attach to the side of the cage so these are attached with cable ties. The lazy susan turntable bearing I used this time is 6″ as I thought that this would give the wheel more stability and stop it rubbing against the side of the cage as it’s used (the other wheels have kitchen roll behind them to prevent the rubbing but this isn’t an ideal solution). The issue I have with the 6″ bearing is that it’s already loud on it’s own, I don’t know if this is an issue in general or just with the particular bearing I got.