Wonder if any of the wood workers in this group has ever made a coffin?
In this day and age with the amount of money people spend on pets I was wondering if there would be any market for pet coffins? I see Rockler sells hardware and has plans. I guess they could probably be marketed through adds or displays at veterinary offices. Bill T
I've got three dogs (and one cat) buried in my side yard. I made boxes from MDO, glued and screwed butt joints. It worked fine.
I doubt there are enough folks out there to make this a paying proposition. Also, since dogs come in a wide range of sizes, with far more variation than with people, you'll need a wide range of sizes of caskets.
I got the Rockler plans a while back, looked them over, and didn't really like them very much. Looked pretty but seemed rather flimsy. If you're going to be marketing pet caskets rather that using one to bury Fido in the back yard under his favorite tree then you need to look into applicable regulations as well--I don't know if there are any but this being America in the 21s Century it's better to be sure that there aren't than to tool up for production and then have some bureaucrat shut you down.
Hey Bill, I had a 22 inch wide by 10 foot cedar board, 6/4 inch thick (all rough) that I was saving for some special project. When my first pet Canada goose died I decided to use it for the coffin. That goose was like velcro to me- it would follow me all around the yard and loved to watch me split firewood because it would eat the grubs under the bark. It was a rescued abandoned gosling, I guess two or three days old, and it bonded to us immediately. I've also made coffins from oak for three of my special Mallards and include small cans of sweet corn for them as a symbolic gesture. I used simple joinery, dadoed ends, sides and bottom and added a recessed top. To prevent any digging from raccoons, etc, I lined the grave with flat stone.
Yeah, there is a pet cemetary a few towns over and it is costly.
As far as the market, of course there is one. I buy most of my hard-stock from a wholesaler and he once mentioned that a local cabinet shop had an order from time to time....wealthy folks. And, I Googled "pet caskets" and got back a bunch of merchant leads.
I made a walnut coffin for my parrot several years ago. I would not purchase one because they are easy to make. I used walnut because that's what I had on hand at the time of his death.
Dunno! Always bothers me when there's a glaring spelling error on the front page of a website. I always wonder if they cut corners in proof reading their content, what corners do they cut in their product.
"acomadate" should be accommodate - didn't bother to look any further AND - IMHO, not having English as a first language is no excuse.
guess it's been thought of already...all you need is a strong link with a local pet cemetery, or if you enjoy competition, you can set up another web site to market your product. :o)
Bothers me that they don't write their pages with software that includes a spell-checker...
Welcome to the 90's...
I have to add, since I'm in the biz, that it's mostly the fault of whoever built the site... Most people have one built instead of doing it themselves, it's usually more cost effective.. Mac
A lot of people have their pets cremated. The pets are actually put in a freezer until the crematorium operator arrives. People that want the ashes back get them in a non-descript plastic flask.
You might want to make urns for these cremains, as they are called.
I used to own a courier company that brought the cremains back to local vets for eventual return to their owners. This guy sent HUNDREDS of these things out a week.
Suggest a high quality product. These pets mean an awful lot to their owners. Shoddy work will kill you fast. Sell through veterenarians.
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