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48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well organized and crammed with projects, January 28, 2005
This review is from: Birdhouses You Can Build in a Day (Popular Woodworking) (Paperback)
I you enjoy birds in the garden, a few birdhouses will help you keep them hanging around after they chow down on the bird seed. A nice house can be very expensive, but if you're handy with a hammer, you can whip one up yourself. I was delighted to see the wonderful new Popular Woodworking book, Birdhouses You Can Build in a Day.
This book has over fifty projects and includes plans for the beginning as well as the experienced woodworker. My favorite project is the log cabin birdhouse for the Eastern Bluebird, but there are also project plans and instructions for building a bat house and a butterfly house. In addition, there are projects for bird baths and bird feeders.
One wonderful feature of this book is that each bird house is made to attract a specific type of bird. The projects are organized alphabetically by bird species, so it is fairly easy to find the house you want to build. You may have a bit of trouble finding the right house for a few species, such as the American Robin, which I would have looked for under Robin, but, overall, it is a nice way to organize the book.
Another nice feature in this book is the informational sidebar for each bird species. There is also a section for each house that tells how to install it to attract the bird species that it is made for. Additional useful information includes construction notes, a section on attracting birds, butterflies, and bats, and a resource section.
Birdhouses You Can Make in a Day is well written, informative, and inspiring. The writers' love of wild birds comes through very clearly in this book.
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Good Book, September 10, 2007
This review is from: Birdhouses You Can Build in a Day (Popular Woodworking) (Paperback)
I have purchased a number of birdhouse books. Most of them have plans for birdhouses that are meant to be painted and prettied up - to the point that birds would never occupy them. Birds want something that resembles the wood (untreated) they find in nature. This book has common sense plans that will attract and protect birds. Just so happens that most of the birdhouses are also attractive. This is one of the better birdhouse books.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can build several in a day, March 8, 2009
This review is from: Birdhouses You Can Build in a Day (Popular Woodworking) (Paperback)
This book occupies a nice, comfortable middle ground among birdhouse books - simple, but with enough variation to have fun, and with good technical information for a number of species. All birdhouses in the book are illustrated with both color photos and illustrations, and have tables showing the dimensions of all pieces.
I picked it up because my wife wanted to put up a number of birdhouses this year, so we needed to be able to build them quickly. As an example of how fast these can go, we did the cutting layout for 2 bluebird houses and 1 northern flicker house in about an hour, cut the pieces out literally during the 10-minute intermissions between periods watching a hockey game, and assembled them in about an hour and a half. (Paint or other decoration time would be extra.) Note that that was in an equipped shop - table saw, band saw, and drill press, but even quadrupling the cutting time if using a jigsaw, circular saw and cutting guides, you can still knock these out in short order. You'll find assembly fastest if you have access to a narrow crown stapler or finish nailer, but hand-nailing, like cutout with a circular saw, isn't going to add a lot of time.
I used 3/4" exterior plywood in a good grade (make sure it's exterior!). I had the yard cut the sheet into quarters to make handling easy as well as accomodate cutting the longest pieces in the book. A sheet will make 6-10 birdhouses, depending on the sizes and types you select. The 3 birdhouses referenced above (one quite large) took two of the quarter sheets, with little scrap. The plywood set me back all of $31.00. Do yourself a favor and get a better grade at a lumberyard - stay away from the big box home center for this. Also, if you do use plywood, you will have to paint or use a preservative on the exterior of the houses you build.
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