April 8, 2013

Hello again. Well it’s been a bit of a layoff, and I do apologize for the delay in posting. Unfortunately health problems have not allowed me to work on my minis and I am only now just getting back in the saddle. Still have some physical therapy to endure but hopefully my hands will be back to normal or as close to it as possible soon. So let’s get going. Today I added the wire mesh to the bottom three pieces of the coop.

While the glue dried on that I gave the rest of the coop a thorough sanding with my palm sander in preparation for staining. Now if you don’t have a palm sander you can still get the job done by hand with or without a sanding block and regular fine grit sandpaper. I use the palm sander because it’s easier on my hands.

If you’re interested in buying one you can find them used, all over eBay (which is where I got mine) and they’re fairly inexpensive. I don’t recommend buying new unless you know you’re going to be using it a lot and for more than your mini work. But for mini’s, used is just fine.

So, with the sanding done I moved on to staining and of course (you guessed it) I’m all but completely out of red mahogany stain, so it looks like I’m back at a standstill with that until I can get more stain delivered. Meanwhile I dry fit the pieces of the coop and discovered (as you often will when working from scratch) that I had not allowed enough room between the front wall and the end of the ramp to the nesting area. So to correct this I added a small strip of wood to the front end of the roof, now I’m just waiting for the glue to dry so I can fit the three mesh walls to it. Now, adding this extra piece to the front creates a gap on either side that I will fill in with a couple of narrow scrap wood doors.