Woodshop Christmas Project #1- Birdhouses (part 3)

I received several questions about how we build the bird boxes in my woodshop class so I decided to give a brief description here. It is only very rarely that I come across a kid who doesn't want to learn about building a good birdhouse and this must be the all-time classic woodshop project. I would also highly recommend this project as an excellent project for homeschoolers to study earth science and/or the biology of animals where the potential for hands-on extension projects are as big as the sky. Although I use rough cut boards from the lumber yard you could also use standard 3/4" boards from the local home improvement store. As (FIGURE- 1) shows I start out with six pieces of wood which consists of two sides, a backboard, a door, a top, and a bottom.

 1. Attaching Sides To The Backboard

 As seen in (FIGURE-2) the two sides are attached to the backboard. To get these two sides in place perfectly I first instruct the kids to make a mark on the backboard 3" down, then use a square to make a perfectly straight line across it. I stress that this line must be squared right-on or the door will not open correctly later on so don't let your square slip off the boards edge while marking.

The next step is placing the top of each side exactly on that line while making sure that the side is also flush with the outer edge of the backboard. My students then use a pencil to trace the outline of the two sides on the backboard. This way they can then make two perfectly centered marks so that they can then drill small pilot holes into the backboard that will make screwing on their sides easy and a no-miss task. Be sure that you hold your drill at 90 degrees straight so that your pilot holes are straight.

2. Attaching Door And Hinge Screws

In (FIGURES 3 & 4) I show how we insert the hinge screws into the door. I use dry wall screw of varying lengths depending on the woods thickness. First I custom cut the door to fit inside the space of the two sides, then measure 1" down from the top of each side and make a mark as shown in (FIGURE-2). Extend this mark around to the outer side as shown in (FIGURE-3).  With your door now loosly snug between the sides make a mark from the doors center around to the outer part of the side and where your two lines intersect, that is where you then drill a pilot hole for your "hinge" screws. (SEE FIGURE-3) With your hinges now in place your door should open and close. I would suggest adjusting the two hinge screws so that the door is very "snug" but not tight. It only has to be opened once a year to clean out the old nest so "snug" is good.

Now all you have to do is attach the top and bottoms to complete the box. By the way I cut a 15 degree angle on one side of my tops using the table saw so that they will fit nicely to the backboard. If you don't have a table saw then you can still just attach the top "as-is" and it will still work just fine as far as the birds are concerned. I also teach my students to drill pilot holes for all their screw holes to prevent the wood from crackings. It's also a good idea to drill a bunch of 1/4" holes in the bottom for good drainage and extra ventilation. Another good practice is to have the kids use a chisel or screwdriver to scratch up the inside of the door so that the young birds have a rough surface to attach their claws for climbing out of the birdhouse. This is especially important if using smoothly planed wood.

Good luck and I hope that you have as much fun building shelters for our feathered friends as I have had.

Woodshop Christmas Project #1- Birdhouses (part 2)

Since the cold season has arrived I walked around to all of my birdhouses yesterday to clean out the nests built last spring. It's always interesting to see all the stuff that birds shuttle into those boxes and I've seen everything from plastic, cardboard, fish line, twine, and you name it. Most of the nesting materials from this year were surprisingly "clean" and they consisted of fairly uniform straws and grasses so that was a good sign.

I've already placed a selection of the nests in plastic shopping bags since I like to share them with the kids in my birdhouse building classes. The nests usually inspire even more questions and when there's some kind of foreign man-made objects woven into the straw that opens up another opportunity to explore the effects of mans encroachment on natural habitats.

The Oklahoma Department of Conservation offers some good information on building birdhouses that has been part of my research materials for several years. Some of their advise is as follows:

Do not set out a birdhouse if...

·         It has a perch -  Perches make it easy for predators to raid the nest and attract non native cavity nesters. 

       In my opinion this isn't a big deal and I let the kids put on a perch if they desire. Personally I've never had a problem with predators messing with my birdhouses and if I did then I could just remove the perch. It is a fact that birds could care less if there's a perch there or not and not having one doesn't impede there entrance at all. 

  ·        The wood is less than 3/4 inch thick -  Thinner wood causes the birds to suffer or die in heat during sunny periods and chill on cool nights. 

      Normally the wood that we use in building our birdhouses is about 3/4" thick but we have used wood that was much thicker so I guess that I'm not breaking this guideline.

  ·         The wood at the entrance hole is less than one and a half inches thick-  A deep hole helps prevent raccoons, crows, starlings and other predators from reaching into the nest to take the young, adult, and/or eggs. 

      The door wood to our birdhouses has always been the thickest of the whole house but my intent was in helping to keep the door soundly shut from high winds, weather, or predators prying about. I never really considered that a deeper hole would discourage predators so I'm glad that we've been doing that correctly.

·         It is made of cedar -  The odor you smell contains plicatic acid which is one of the leading causes of occupational asthma in people and pollutes every breath of the young birds  especially on hot sunny days. Chests are made of cedar to create an undesirable  environment for, or kill small creatures and should not be used for bird homes.

                        This is interesting information to consider but cedar is a lot more expensive than pine in our area 
                        of the country so we're good here too. I wonder if using pressure treated lumber would matter?

  ·         The distance from the center of the hole to the bottom of the front is less than 7 inches- Shallow boxes become feeders for Blue Jays, squirrels, raccoons and other predators.

      I just barely meet this guideline.

   ·     It doesn't have adequate ventilation  The young birds will die on hot sunny days as the mother bird sits in the entrance hole gasping for air.

 Good ventilation is very important and I stress this during our classes. Sometimes the kids literally want to caulk every crack tightly so I have to intervene with their good intentions. Imagine a fully feathered bird roosting in a tiny space with no windows and only one tiny hole opening to the air. That space needs good ventilation to help the birds cope. The birdhouse also needs to have good drainage so we sometimes drill a lot of small holes in the bottom.

 

Woodshop Christmas Project #1- Birdhouses (part 1)

Fridays are one of my busiest woodshop and scouting days of the week where up to 36 kids pass through my classes through out the day. Scouting classes normally center around various hands-on outdoor skills such as knots, fire building, or map & compass but during the holiday season scouting is all about crafts & gifts for the holiday season.

This time of the year is always exciting as the kids are anxious to make gifts for their family & friends so it's sometimes a challenge for me to also make their experience in crafting something that will benefit and compliment their individual educational goals. Our education theme this session is "Winter Holidays Around The World" so I like to find projects that center around sharing, giving, and spreading goodwill among family & friends and one popular project that always meets these objectives has been the construction of shelters for our feathered friends... the birdhouse.

Fortunately in North Carolina we have tons of sawmills since this is the No. 1 furniture producing state in the nation. One of our local sawmills always gives us a good deal on pine lumber that has enabled our tradition of building birdhouses to continue for more than a decade now where hundreds of kids have had a quality woodshop experience. The picture to the right shows the birdhouse that I designed which consists of 7 pieces of wood- the backboard, 2 sides, top, bottom, door, and door handle. All of the pine wood is locally cut, which is good, however the downside is that it isn't kiln dried so we have to be prepared to get them together quickly after processing the wood since it still contains quite a bit of moisture and will "cup" on you if it's left to sit around in the very dry & warm woodshop for any length of time. Some years are better than others but this years birdhouse wood probably still had about 30 percent moisture still inside. Of course the upside of using such lumber is that it's cheap to buy AND nails & screws penetrate the wood with ease so it's more kid friendly.

Year after year "the birdhouse" has proved itself worthy as truly being the classic woodshop project of all time. I always begin each class with an upbeat lecture/questions session that covers everything from why the birdhouse has a door that opens to how to get all your measurements right on the money during constructing. (By the way the door opens so that you can clean out the old nest during the winter months so that the bird can build a new nest each spring. It's amazing how many kids always say, "It's so that you can put food in the house", or "So I can watch the birds hatch from the eggs.")

Today's afternoon class went exceedingly well and the kids really got into getting their birdhouses put together correctly. Everyone was patient, even  when their board cracked when placing a screw but this provided the perfect opportunity to teach those students how to drill a pilot hole before screwing their boards together and thus prevent the wood from expanding and splitting.

Yeah, some wood still split beyond repair a few times but the main thing is that they learned to find solutions for these problems thus gaining a little more confidence in their ability to successfully construct a project. Learning how to patiently find workable solutions to woodshop construction problems is also a very powerful lesson that will also teach them how to handle other more intense situations with their families, teachers, and friends in everyday life. Their brains were really working on overdrive to soak up and better understand what I was showing them and it's moments like this that the contentment of a woodshop teacher comes together full-circle.

As the birdhouses started to be completed I then set new expectations for each student to find a way to extend their project to make it uniquely theirs. Teaching the kids how to extend their woodshop project has always been one of my most powerful teaching methods which challenges the students to take their completed project to the next level. They could add a woodburning, come up with a fancy paint job, add some kind of extension to their house such as a chimney, do a woodcarving, or whatever their creative side can  muster up. Expecting kids to extend their projects also teaches them to do their best work and it slows them down as they focus more on the creative side of their minds. Anyone can learn to make a basic birdhouse but once it's built how can the student make their project stick out from the crowd? When you ask that question you're taking education to a new level.

Image via Wikipedia