We’ve got two dogs, Hammer and Sydney. They’re lab mixes and are siblings from the same litter. They’ve been with us for about 11 years and my wife was there when they were born, so needless to say, they’re a big part of our family.
Our kids have the job of feeding the dogs everyday, and every time, they have to slide the individual dog bowls back into place on the floor before filling them.
After talking about it for a long time, I finally decided to help contain the food bowls so they wouldn’t move around and at the same time, raise the bowls up a little so the dogs didn’t have to reach down so far to eat.
One note on raised bowls.. some dogs don’t handle this well because it’s easier to eat quickly, sometimes too quickly. If you try this with your dogs, you might want to test how they work with raised bowls before building a whole thing for it.
Luckily, our dogs are old enough that they’re not in that much of a hurry and are doing great with the raised bowls!
Here’s what you’ll need:
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I cut a sheet of 1/2″ birch plywood down to about 25″x13″
I cut some thinner strips to about the same sizes.
Then ripped those strips to 1″ thick.
I sat the two long sides in place, and measured the gap.
I cut two strips to the size of the gap.
Using wood glue and clamps, I added the strips to the underside of the plywood.
I added all four sides, and used LOTS of clamps.
I used rough walnut, and cut two pieces to about 14″ long.
I cleaned up one faces on the jointer.
Then I ran them through the planer to smooth the faces.
With the joined edge against the fence, I cut the opposite edge to be parallel.
Then I cut the walnut to 1″ strips.
I laid out the pieces to find angles and placement for the leg assembly.
I used an angle find to capture the leg angle.
Then I matched that angle on the miter saw.
Each piece of walnut got the angle cut on it. I made pencil marks on each piece to remember which direction the miter needed to face.
The pieces were trimmed to length while being mitered.
With them all cut, I double checked size and layout.
The added pocket holes to the two cross pieces.
I glued the connecting faces, and clamped the pieces to the table while screwing them together.
I made sure to get these joints really tight.
Finally I sanded the walnut with some 220 grit paper.
After it dried, I squared up all four sides of the top on the table saw.
I found the center of the top, and the mid point on each side.
I set the compass to half the radius of my dog bowls.
I drew a circle using each point as the center.
After drilling a pilot hole, I cut out the circles with a jigsaw (from the top of the panel).
I quickly sanded the rough opening.
I drew a reference line on the leg base to match the thickness of the plywood border (3/4″).
Then I countersunk pilot holes in that area.
Adding glue to all touching surfaces, I screw the walnut to the plywood border.
Finally, I finished the whole thing with butcher block conditioner (wax/oil mixture).
Then I coated everything with polyurethane.
Here it is, all done!
