Fancy pants peepers

I had been recently informed by someone much smarter than myself that our new peepers needed a perch for to perch upon. So as she drove off to work, I headed to the work shop. (Actually, I headed out to prime the window frame, but it was much too cold so I opted to do this instead.)

The peepers are far from full grown and are still in their big box so I wanted to come up with a self supporting gang plank type set up for them.

Raiding the wood scraps once again I found a good length of pine with a little bark on the edges that would make a neat little detail. I decided chop it in half and join them together using dovetails. (Yup, dovetail...I had some time.)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a pro dovetailer, but it's nice to practice from time to time. Not to mention, I would only be joining two boards together. I would rather practice a technique on that than on a dresser with a bunch of drawers.

I laid out the pins using a set of dividers and a bevel gauge, and cut them by hand. Some chisel whacking cleaned the waste out and I used the same chisel to part and clean the sides of the pins.

I realized that I cut them on the wrong side of the board, I wanted the bark up. Hmmm, maybe if I turn it over it would still work. Yup, I actually tried. That doesn't work, silly.




Oh well, I cut backwards off and cut them the correct way. Ah much better. The bark is on the bottom on one side, but the peepers don't seem to mind.