Boulder Birding Big Day report

In one word... disappointing. It was cold, windy, and practically no birds.  It took us the full 4 hours just to see the dozen or so birds that you see in the city park on a nice day.  Oh well, can't win them all.  Hopefully the nice weather forecasted for this week will bring them in.

Topping it off

Last but not least is building up the crown moulding. There was plenty of farting around getting it cut and dry fit but we'll just skip to the final assembly. The dentil moulding just got fastened right to the top of the carcass.

The next step was to build up some framing that the crown moulding would attach to. This framing also serves as a foundation to fasten the top down.

Finishing but not Finished

One of the big dilemmas with this project was matching the color between the solid oak and the plywood.  I tried a number of things from staining, boiled linseed oil, amber shellac and combinations of all of them.  I finally decided on a mix of two different stains for the plywood and just a coat of BLO on the solid wood. This is a very short explanation of what a hassle color matching was. Next time I'll be going straight to using dye instead.  I'm not too familiar with dye but I understand that this would have been a great application.  Well, live and learn right.

Because I colored the two different materials differently it was tricky deciding in what order to color and assemble the shelf.  I ultimately decided to color all the parts before assembly, which in turn led to some other details to deal with. Namely, getting good glue adhesions between mating pieces. I didn't think glue would have adhered well to oiled wood so this was easy enough to address with some blue tape.

'Back' in business

The next step was a pretty straightforward one, just a simple frame and panel assembly for the back of the case.  Since this whole assembly is going to be fastened to the case I just used biscuits to join the frames. I also used biscuits to align and fasten it to the shelf carcass.  When it's all said and done I think the case will have plenty of strength despite the shortfalls of biscuits.  I also used a few pocket hole screws where they would be hidden.

Bookshelf visits the dentist

One particular detail of this project I was excited about was the dentil moulding. I'll admit I was a little intimidated but once I got started it was a breeze.  The biggest headache is figuring out the spacing of the "teeth" so that your mitred corners work out.  The mitre gauge jig was simple as can be. Just like one you'd use for finger joints along with the dado blade.  The next step was to get the blade just the right height so that it didn't cut into the roundover on the piece.  So after dialing it on a piece of scrap pine I went to town on the oak and bada bing. Super easy way to add a classical detail that looks great.

 This last picture jumps ahead but shows the moulding installed. It illustrates nicely what I meant about the corners working out. You don't really want to end up with a sliver of a block or worse yet a groove right on the corner.

Up next is the construction of the back panel.

Migration update

The ridiculously late spring has made it seem like the migration is progressing very slowly, but after looking at some old lists and checking eBird, things aren't what they seem.  Things are relatively on time.  I've been sneaking in some birding before work lately and haven't been seeing much new but I'd expect lots of warblers to be showing up any day now.  There have been a few clear nights and sunny days in a row so the birds couldn't ask for better migration conditions, except maybe a strong south wind.  I sure hope things pick up by this weekend because I'm leading a group for Boulder Birding Big Day up at Boulder Lake Dam. Its a great event that I haven't missed in years and there have been times in the past that it was the first day of the year that I saw many species.  Hopefully the weather is good and the warblers are plentiful.

A short list of current species:
swamp sparrow
ruby-crowned kinglet
yellow-rump warbler
horned grebe
brown creeper
hermit thrush
I thought I heard both chimney swifts and mourning doves but didn't see them.
There are other ubiquitous species out there that I just take for granted not on the list, eg. blackbird, song sparrow, robin etc.