Our older daughter has a pet rabbit named Dotti. Dotti is well behaved and we always try to give her opportunity to explore and get exercise with minimal supervision. Rather than confining Dotti to our daughter's room all the time, the hallway and bathroom just outside her the door makes for some nice "skating" fun. (wood floor...slippery for bunny feet...but fun, nonetheless. But of course, there's always a catch and here that means the hallway opens onto our loft-landing above the great room which also directly accesses the stairway. The latter would be very unsafe for Dotti and we just don't want the risk of her ended up like Rufus who preceded her with a three-legged situation. I suspect Dotti appreciates that concern, even if she doesn't know it.
DSC_8738.jpg
At any rate...the solution was to create a "Bunny Gate" just like one might use for a dog or a child. (not that they are equivalent of course) Rather than buy something ordinary, I decided to do some skill-building and use the CNC to make something more interesting. I created a glued up panel of clear "pine" and did a design that was oh-so-Bunny. Starting with a panel was both a good thing and a bad thing. The good is that I could make the design anything I wanted. The bad thing is that the resultant structure would have a lot of weakness by itself. I chose the method for the former and dealt with the latter by inserting some steel rod into the perimeter of the structure on the back side to make it stiff and strong. The end result speaks for itself. It's strong enough for the job, looks somewhat cute since it's visible in the public area and does what it's supposed to do.
BunnyGate.jpg