Furniture Design: The Cat Who Blagged an Interweb

Sunday night, a neighbor of mine voiced an issue- it seems her loft is currently only accessible by ladder, which her cats cannot climb, and so she asked if there was any builder-type person in the building who wouldn't mind building her a device so that her cats might descend more safely. I volunteered, made some measurements, and today I finally set aside some time to work on it.

The design is simple- three support posts, with staggered platforms spaced about 15" apart, about what we considered an appropriate easy height for a cat to jump. I thought, "hey, I've got those wood full rounds I couldn't use before, maybe I can make those the basis of the structure- even better because there are no sharp corners with which to injure cats.

I tested a corner joint- just made a small one- I planned to hold the whole thing together with these pins and some wood glue- as seen below. It would be simple, clean, and elegant- and best of all it would be better than the client had expected.




Easy, right? No. It turns out that handrail stock is SOME OF THE MOST ORNERY MATERIAL IN THE WORLD. First of all, it turns out they are made of some sort of hard wood, so my spade bits were going almost nowhere, and they're round- and anyone who has ever tried drilling a round item can tell you it can, at times, drive one to madness. So with everything not drilling and rolling around, I was forced to put together a jig, which, I'll admit, looks like something out of Saw VIII.



Surprisingly, the device excellently centered the holes, and I'm pretty proud of how awesome it works and how hodge-podge it looks. Unfortunately, the material was still too hard for my jig to get any more than a half inch, so I scrapped the jig idea, and went with simple wood screws and wood glue. Which in itself was a non-gluing drill-resistant fiasco, but at least, by the end, I had the main structure together.



I'll work on this into tonight- but it just goes to show knowing your materials can make a huge difference- and this is one material I will never use again- unless I am specifically installing a handrail.