Probably every woodworker at sometime in his career builds bird houses. My wife loves to watch and feed birds. I have been building this Bavarian style bird feeder shown below for a very long time. I have probably built more than 20. They make great gifts!
I started out building these from cedar. They turned out great but cedar is expensive and the bird feeders only lasted one or two seasons. The cedar weathered ok; however, the birds and squirrels like to chew on the wood.
I switch over to composite material (plastic deck boards) and these bird houses last for many seasons.
I am often asked how I make the roof tiles. I start with a 1 x6 board and I cut 1/8″ wide strips. I stack these up and cut them into 1.5″ long blanks. Each roof requires a little more than 350 tiles. The next step is to cut the 45 degree chamfer on the bottom on both corners. This is easily done with a jig on a router table.
All the tile must be glued onto the roof before the roof sections are cut into the final triangular sharpe. Fortunately, my wife does not mind gluing the tiles.
The spindle on the top of the feeders are custom made on a lathe.
Here is another picture of the last batch of bird feeders. (You can also see some of tools in the background of this picture.) I am still looking for a picture of the matching bird house. I know I have a one somewhere in my database.
If you click on the link above, you can see a picture of the matching bird house built from cedar
