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View Full Version : Bird Feeder, quick and dirty



tlempicke
12-18-2012, 06:08 PM
A lot of you guys post such beautiful work that I am almost embarrassed to put this up. It WAS fun though, so here goes.

My grandkids will be here for a couple of days over Christmas. Trying to think of a way to keep them entertained for a couple of hours I went looking for a craft project. this is an adaptation of stuff that I saw in the Aspire archives.

The project needed to be quick and dirty for me and uncomplicated for them. Our local lumber yard has a bin of 24 x 24 inch birch plywood that is 1/4 inch thick. Each feeder uses about 2/3 of the board.

I drew it up in Aspire 3.5. When I put a mic to the plywood it turned out to be far less than .250 inch. As a result the tool paths may not be quite deep enough. If you use the fill in sheet and put about 110% for the Z axis it should be about right for actual 1/4 inch plywood.

After I cut it out I cleaned up the edges a bit and used a hot glue gun to hold it together. I also used hot glue to fill in the "trench" where the two sheets that make up the roof come together. The thing is surprisingly strong.

So each child will get the seven pieces that make up the feeder. After he/she gets the edges cleaned up and fit together I will help with the glue gun. After that we have some ivory house paint followed by a set of tempera colors (5.95 Hobby Loby) and set of artists brushes to provide "Bird Attractive" decorations.

I will post the files in the following message.

tlempicke
12-18-2012, 06:22 PM
Hmmm posting files gets a bit more tricky. Here is the DDXF file of the project. If you want the others just send an e mail to tom@lempicke.com

sailfl
12-18-2012, 07:37 PM
Tom, Thanks

GlenP
12-18-2012, 09:04 PM
Well Tom I don't have grandkids yet but in my opinion that is awesome project. Something you will be making together. I have a birdhouse mounted to the wall in my shop me ans my son made many years ago. Making memories.
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Tom.

tlempicke
12-19-2012, 07:37 AM
Let me try this. I zipped the files and it now appears that they will upload O.K.

Mike Kelly
12-19-2012, 11:16 AM
Thanks Tom

I have a bunch of small pieces wood, so this file will go to good use.

Mike