Cedar Bird Feeder

In talking with my parents they mentioned that they had plans my grandpa had drawn for a bird feeder similar to the one he built for them in 1977. After getting a copy of the plan it is very clear where I get my tendency to over-engineer and over-design things.  According to my parents grandpa wanted to sell plans and kits for these and other bird feeders, I think it would have been interesting if the internet had been available to grandpa to market the different ideas he had during his life time.

Grandpa's plan had places to hold those seed blocks but I decided remove those from my version of the feeder, and in doing so each bird feeder could be made from a single 8' 1x8.

The cedar 1x8 available at the big box stores are surfaced on 3 sides, which means that one side is rough.  Before I started cutting any pieces to length I quickly sanded the rough side with some 40 and 80 grit sand paper on my random orbit sander. Below you can see the difference after the quick sanding.

The bird feeder goes together quickly, in the picture below I still need to add the latches that hold the roof on, and the plastic that holds the seed in.

This is close the same style my grandpa built my parents and the birds seem to really like this style of feeder, it gets emptied before all the other feeders they have. I really enjoyed studying the plans that grandpa drew and then building from them.  I see myself build a lot more of these bird feeders.