Kristy wanted to give her mother a new squirrel feeder for her birthday: I made one about 3 years ago and the squirrels have chewed it up. To be clear, the squirrel feeder is more a shelf for peanuts.
I had some end cuts of cherry that would work great and make a good looking shelf. The boards were already planed from Kristy’s office desk. I used the band saw to curve the corners.
I thought it would be neat to mount a letter “B” (the first letter of Kristy’s family’s last name) to the vertical piece. I thought about cutting it out of plywood with a jig saw, but decided to 3D print it on my Makerbot. It looks ok.
The vertical board was raw on the top right and Kristy really wanted that look, so I left it natural.
I joined the two pieces together. Since it will be outside I wanted to reinforce it with some deck screws. By the way, I put a coat of shellac on the front and then after this picture another coat on the bottom and back.
I mounted the “B” with hot glue and hid the mounting screw in the top part of it. After that, I put 2 coats of polyurethane. At this point, it was complete.
It was pretty rainy when we visited her parents, so we didn’t mount it. My plan was to take down the old one and put up the new one, but Kristy’s dad decided to stack them instead and sent us this picture.
I expect the new squirrel feeder to look similar in the next few years! It’s fun to see both of them together. Though it’s a simple representation, it show how I’ve changed over the last couple years.
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