[Benefitsben]

Originally Posted by AmityvilleHams

Plastic wouldn't be a good idea. When chewed, it can be ingested which can cause serious and life threatening intestinal blockages. MDF shouldn't be used either as it also is not safe for chewing. Pine, if truly a high quality kiln dried pine that is not treated with anything, can be safe for toy parts. The main reason for this is that toys have a significantly smaller surface area than filling a cage with shredded pine aka shavings so exposure to phenols is extremely low for such items.

Climbing toys in general aren't really suitable for hamsters. They aren't natural climbing animals like rats and they also happen to have fairly poor eyesight naturally so it's really best to avoid climbing toys as a whole - especially any using ladders with rungs or gaps(and even on non-ladder surfaces gaps and such can be dangerous), but there are many dangerous things when it comes to hamster toys.

Originally Posted by LunaTheHamster1

If it was for free roaming and you were to keep an eye on your hamster i dont think it would matter as much as if you were going to leave it in your hamsters cage.

Also you get plastic wheels for hamsters, maybe you could research them and see if you can find out what types of plastic is used.

Originally Posted by Serendipity7000

Pine is fine when it’s a solid piece of wood. All pine sold in the uk is kiln dried as well. The problem with pine shavings is the huge surface area of all the shavings giving off phenols. But a piece of wood is fine. Mdf is probably ok but it does contain formaldehyde which offgasses but as Luna says it depends whether it is for in the cage or out. I would go with pine. Any plastic once hardened after melting should be safe but probably best not for inside the cage. An out of cage toy.

It sounds an interesting and difficult project. Hamsters aren’t great climbers but a maze type climbing toy could be good - ie with levels and entrances and gentle slopes. Can you use other materials for texture? Eg hemp mat or sisal string/rope? Those are safe to chew and you can make things interesting wrapping sisal string round things to give a texture. Someone on here wrapped it round Pringles tubes to make a tunnel with texture.

Thanks everyone

I'll be using pine for the project then. The toy I'll be basing mine on is in the attached files, so it's fairly small and doesn't have any ladders or anything.

Also serendipity, thanks for that idea. I might actually make a kinda maze system that you can change around, although it would be a lot of work lol :)