The Bat House

No Bat Man doesn't live there but we will be trying to draw some tenants next year. My Sister-In-Law has a little bat problem so we decided to make her a bat house for Christmas, and when your are making one why not two, one for us. I did a little on line research and found that cedar is OK for a bat house. I was told by a friend it wasn't, so we'll find out if they stay empty, and if so I'll build more. After looking around I found as simple design, modified it a bit and this is what I came up with.

Small and simple, vent in the front.

Three chambers with mesh for them to hang on to.

Murratte's Writing Slope

This writing slope is made from cooked birds eye maple, with maple spline in the lid, I veneered cherry to the bottom, on both sides of a piece of hard board and my wife's hand died material for the underside of the lid. I haven't been able to build much this past year because of working on the "Farm" and it was nice to just get into the shop and create.

One of the small ones, 10 x 13, leather surface for a writing top.

The hand died material looks great against the dark wood.

Maple splines at the corner on the lid.

I really like birds eye maple, a great look.

A New/Old Bird Feeder

We got this feeder a few years ago, the roof was poorly done and fell apart after on season, along with the base. I saved the columns and seed holder along with the cable to hang it, and since work on "The Searsville Project" has progressed to a point were I am taking a few weeks off, I decided to work on the feeder. My friend has two new decks built on his place and offered me the cutoffs from the cedar decking, and they were great. I used trial and error to make the roof, there are 10 segments and were beveled to 7½ º to help with the pitch. The base is made up of two boards joined with biscuits and glue. I smoothed the edges of the roof line and I've been told it has a mushroom look and "she" likes it, so I do.

Tam's Dragonfly

After a year and a half, I was finally able to give Tam her dragonfly. When they moved to Grand Manan I wanted to have something for a house warming gift when we visited them, and with everyone being very busy we decided to just take a day and go. The dragonfly was made out of cedar posts I was given, I cut one and glued it up to make the wings and just turned another for the body. It is about 18 inches long and wide, inspired by earlier dragonfly's I made the previous year.

New Trim

With all the work being done at the house in Searsville I finally got a chance to do some woodworking, I make the trim and baseboards. It may not sound like much but we got the size and profile we wanted and at a better price overall.

These are the mock up pieces I made to see if we like it. They are 8 inches high and a nice ¾ inch quarter round, all made from pine.

It's nice to have a shop to do the work even the space for painting. I like getting boards 10 and 12 feet long for the full run of a wall and not having to piece it together.

A Gift Reworked

A few years ago a family friend, Steve, gave me a cut off of a piece of wood he works with making cabinets. Not just an ordinary piece of maple or oak but Zebra wood, which by the way was 2 inches thick, 10 inches wide and 24 inches long. It has a few flaws in it which wouldn't work for him but for me well this was gold. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it and it sat there waiting to be worked on, until one day I heard that our friends, Dolly and Steve, became Grand Parents to a little girl named Rayna, and I thought maybe Dolly would like a box for keepsakes from baby Rayna and so I now had a purpose for the Zebra wood. Thus a gift of a block of wood to me is returned to them as a box for Dolly.

This box is 5 x 5 x 10 inches with a curly maple ascent.

The top is just a simple slider, but it works very well.

The Searsville Project

I haven't had much time to make anything new lately. We bought an older farm house and are in the middle of doing some work on it. So my time is taken up there. You can follow our progress at the blog I started to show family and friends what we are doing and how it's going. The blog is called "The Searsville Project", you can link to it from the side bar on this page, if it doesn't work here is the link. http://thesearsvilleproject.blogspot.com/

Here is a picture of the house, we know it is at least 116 years old because we found an old news paper under the floor boards in one of the upstairs closets. The paper was dated 8 January 1896.