Bird and House Made From Scraps (also Exploring New Techniques)

I saw the scraps challenge on the Instructables website and it made me think about the definition of scraps.

Can every leftover piece be considered as scrap? If that is true, then I have a garage full of scrap because I keep nearly all leftover pieces of my projects. However, in my opinion the definition of scraps is: Off cuts that every normal person would throw away. But I have kept some of that scrap from my previous projects.

The scraps that I used in this projects are small strips of wood that were off cuts from a 2x4 and pieces of aluminium sheet that were cut off when I made birds. I also had some short pieces of welding rod, which remain after each TIG welding project. You can see these supplies on the photo above and it made me think: What can I make from this?

Since 2x4s are often used to build houses, I wanted to make a tiny house from the scrap pieces of wood. The aluminum was leftover when I made flat birds, so now I wanted to make a solid 3 dimensional bird of those off cuts. And filler rod is normally used to TIG weld two pieces of steel to form one piece. Wood cannot be welded but I wanted to use the filler rod to join two pieces of wood together anyway. All of this material combined led to a small aluminum bird with a tiny house.

As I am making this project just for the fun of making it, I also wanted to explore some new techniques that I had never tried before:

• Melting aluminum with a TIG welding machine to make a solid lump of aluminum.
• Sculpting a bird from a lump of aluminum.
• Decorating wood by using the grain pattern of the wood itself.
• Using filler rod to join pieces of wood.

The photo in the introduction shows the scraps that I am using:

• Off cuts of aluminum sheeting. This aluminum was 0.5 mm thick and I used it to cut birds to make a ceiling light where birds seem to fly over a fake hole in the ceiling. I added a link to the Instructable where I made this light. The off cuts consist of the pieces of aluminum around the birds. They are small pieces with no straight edges and too small to be used as aluminum sheet.
• The wood strips are the small strips of 2 cm wide and just a few mm thick that remained after I cut a 2x4 in eight 1x1s to make an egg in the "one board contest". See link below for the Instructable of that project.
• The short pieces of filler rod are leftover from all TIG welding that I do on steel. I have made several Instructables where I weld something, but the latest one with quite a lot of welding is the Engine stand that I made for a Bentley engine. I also added a link to that project.

Ceiling Lighting: Illuminated Birds Seen Through a Fake Hole : 14 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables

Large Egg Made From a Single 2x4 : 24 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables

Engine Stand for 8 Liter Bentley Engine From 1928 : 16 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables

Last year I built a foundry to be able to melt aluminum. That works quite well, but to heat up the entire foundry just to melt some thin pieces of aluminum sheeting seems like a waste of gas to me. So I decided to try if I could melt the aluminum with my TIG welder.

I clamped several pieces of aluminum sheet together, set the welder at a low amperage of just 31 Amps and ignited the arc at the edges of the stack of aluminum. The edges melted very quick. I did not use any filler rod here, just the torch of the welding machine.

On the last photo you see a lump of aluminum. That happened when a larger part of the aluminum was molten and it dropped and fell on my welding table.

Aluminum melts at a much lower temperature than steel, so molten aluminum does not easily stick to steel. The lump which fell on my welding table gave me an idea to use a steel spoon to place under the aluminum while I was heating it.

I used a hammer to make the stack of partly welded aluminum sheeting more compact. Then I took an old spoon and kept that under the aluminum while I ignited the welding machine again. Because now the aluminum is not that thin anymore I increased the heat by setting the amperage of the welding machine to 70 Amps.

The aluminum now stayed on the spoon and it formed one large lump. Only at the top it was slightly stuck to the spoon, but the lump was easy to remove from the spoon.

Now I have two lumps: a small one and a big one. I used a marker to draw the shape of a bird on both lumps and decided to use the large one, because the small one was too small to hold while shaping it.

I clamped the large lump in the vise and used a hacksaw to cut it in half to get a piece that has slightly the shape of a bird already. Also it gave me the opportunity to check if there was any visible porosity in the aluminum. The aluminum looked good, the lump was just solid aluminum without any gaps or porosity.

Then I used some small files to remove the access aluminum by filing. Aluminum is quite soft, so the files worked fine, but the problem was that the bird was too small to clamp in the vise and holding it with my fingers was not very comfortable. I tried using a sanding machine, but the belt is then very close to my fingers and the bird gets hot within seconds. Anyway with some patience I managed to file the aluminum so it started to look like a bird. Most of the time that I was filing the aluminum looked more like a seal, but when I added the wings and the eyes with a marker, it looked more like a bird.

Without a beak the bird did not look complete, so I drilled a small hole in the head of the bird. cut a tiny piece of aluminum sheeting and used pliers to squeeze one end into the shape of a cilinder. Then I put a drop of glue in the hole which I had drilled and placed the beak in the bird's head. It is amazing how that helped to make it look like a bird.

At the supplies section of this Instructable I mentioned that the wood came from the small strips that were left over from my egg project. Those strips were a bit tapered because I tilted the circular saw while cutting the wood for my egg. I folded these left over strips of wood to break the strips in smaller pieces and put them in the bin. One week later I was replacing some broken tiles in the bathroom and needed something to keep the tiles in place while the glue dried. Since these wooden strips had the shape of a wedge, they were very handy to keep the tiles in place, so I went to the bin and took the strips out again. After finishing the bathroom, I wanted to put the wood back in the bin, but then I saw this scraps challenge so instead of going to the bin, the wood ended up on my workbench again.

I took one of the strips and marked several pieces of 6 cm long and three pieces of 4 cm long.

I used a band saw to cut 3 pieces of 4 cm each and 2 pieces of 6 cm each to make the floor of the house. The strips are 2 cm wide.

I used some wood glue, placed the pieces where I wanted them, added clamps and an extra piece of wood to divide the force of the clamps and left it there to set.

For the roof of the house I cut 9 pieces of 6 cm long with the band saw. Since the wood is a bit tapered I placed the pieces of wood alternating with the thicker side pointing up or down in my hand. This shows how the grain of the wood is also alternating. I added glue and clamps and left it there for some time.

After the glue had set, I used a belt sander to remove the rough sides of the wood and to get a rectangular shape.

To get the shape of the roof, I drew two lines and used the band saw again to cut the wood. On the off cut on the third photo you see that the band saw made the wood a bit too hot, but that shows the pattern of the grain quite nicely. I thought about using heat to get this pattern all over the house, but decided that I preferred a more subtle way to show the grain by using a wood stain.

I stained the wood with the same stain that I used for my egg project, so even the stain is from a left over can.

I like the pattern in the roof. At the top left side of the roof, the wood was not sanded perfectly so there the pattern is not so clear. That is something I learned for the next time.

In TIG welding filler rod is added with one hand while the other hand holds the torch. The filler rods are about 1 meter (3 feet) long and you keep feeding this rod into the weld puddle during welding, so the filler rod gets shorter. Since your hand has to hold the filler rod somewhere, you end up with short pieces of filler rod that cannot be added to the weld anymore without burning your hand. I place all my leftover pieces of filler rod in this can, because I always thought: maybe I can make something from these pieces.

Now I am indeed using these pieces of filler rod. They come in slightly different thicknesses, so I selected the pieces that were 1.6 mm thick and cut off the ends that were discolored from the heat of welding. I wore safety goggles because those ends tend to fly everywhere when they are cut off.

Then I marked the rods and cut them to a length of 3.5 cm each. I cut them above the can, so the little pieces that I wanted to use fell in the can instead of flying anywhere.

I added some tape on the floor and the roof and marked where I wanted to have holes. Of course the hole pattern of the floor should match with the roof. I kept the holes 7 mm apart and drilled the holes in the floor with a 1.5 mm drill bit and the holes in the bottom side of the roof with a 2 mm drill bit.

I did that because my filler rods are 1.6 mm thick, so they will have a snug fit in the floor and will fit easily in the roof, which helps when mounting the roof.

Make sure to drill the holes just about 5 mm deep and do not drill all the way through the wood.

I placed the filler rods in the holes in the floor and they fitted perfectly. Then I added the roof and of course not all rods fell into their hole immediately. I used a small screw driver to push or pull the rods to their hole and the roof was in place very soon. I did not add any glue for these rods, they are a snug fit and even when I hold the house upside down, the roof stays in place.

Finally I added a drop of glue and placed the bird in front of the house.

The next day was a nice sunny day, so perfect for a photo outside.