This project is for the birds...#4

Ok, it’s almost Christmas, I haven’t started my shopping, work is busy as hell, and I still haven’t finished the birdhouse! I am getting close though. Here are some progress pics.
Here is the current status. All the partitions on the inside are done..

The dormers and roofing is ready for shingles..

I have all my reference lines struck, and the steel straightedge is set to butt the next course of mini cedar shakes..

After putting in so much effort to keep this thing strictly cedar, I couldn’t bring myself to use poplar or pine dowels. So I tried to find a place to buy 1/2” cedar dowels..no luck. I bought a Lie Nielson dowel plate from Woodcraft, but that made chewed up dowels that looked like they were gnawed by a beaver. I stumbled on a really cool method of making dowels on a router tips web site and it works great so I thought I would share it with everyone..
First I milled a piece of Western Red cedar to exactly the width of my finished dowells..in this case 1/2”. This piece of WRC was a beautifull brown color..I should have bought the whole board!

Then I bought a bull nose bit that was 1/4” radius (half of the diameter of the dowel I wanted and 1/2” width..

Then I set up the bit in my router table with the back of the radius even with the front of the fence and the bottom of the radius 1/32” up from the surface of the table, then carefully ran my 1/2” stock through on edge..

After the first pass this is what you have..half the finished profile…

turn the stock around and run the other side and this is what you end up with…I stopped about an inch from the edge so the dowel wouldn’t come loose and stab me in the head

I cut the dowel loose on the table saw. Then I clean the edge of the 1/2” stock and run it again.The “flash” pops right off the dowels. A little sanding and..perfect WRC dowels!

This worked awesome! This is a great method to make dowels for any project where you want to maintain the same material and might not be able to find the dowels in your type of material.

-- David, South Windsor, CT "I love the smell of sawdust in the morning"