I love me a road trip

I finally bought a real bandsaw (Rikon 14″) and it has been a revelation. I can take raw chunks of lumber/logs and make my own usable boards! I cannot drive down a country road now without constantly scanning for downed trees from which to snipe material. THis birdhouse is from a moldy rotten chunk of Sycamore (maybe). There was a lot of figuring in this wood that really pops.

Multiple coats of spar varnish should hold together for a couple of seasons.

This is the third birdhouse build I have done in the last month.

This project combined laser cutting for the acrylic rings, and table saw/miter saw cutting for the slats.

I used cedar here for the slats with stain and a tung oil finish. Not a big fan of cedar so far. Crazy the way it sucks up finish. I find finishing work to be quite tedious but is a necessary evil I suppose. Will birds be OK with a clear roof?

Should I swap out the brass screws/caps for stainless or black oxide finish?

The inner sleeve is a 6 inch diameter galvanized duct connector so the house should be snug. There are drain holes in the bottom.

I found the perfect gasket to cover the edges of the sheet metal I cut for the opening. I enjoyed designing and building this and have a couple of more roundy concepts already designed and in the pipeline.

My first post pandemic Bay Live-Bait trip was on the Barbarian. Sweet Farallon perfect for 4 guys fishing.

With these fools

Out of Richmond Harbor

6 AM departure and headed out

John the deck hand was on it immediately and kept up a solid Redbull fueled performance all day without a break.

We set up at Southhampton Shoals with the fleet.

It had been way to long not being on the bay.

Captain John is a gregarious guy, more than happy to talk methods, electronics, boats, fish habits, and certainly talkin shit about the other captins LOL.

We were on fish all day with numerous botched bites and lost fish. I was accused of Bass fishing. But they let me reel in a couple.

The deck hand ran the baits on 8 rods every couple of minutes changing weights as necessary. Relatively light gear was the order of the day. Badger is lucky to have a guy that works so hard and we tipped him well. We quit mid afternoon with limits between Paradise and San Quentin.

Meat was processed professionally after the Instagram interlude.

Miles of smiles

The wildlife scene at the dock for the fish cleaning was there as if they had done this before

I saw my next boat at the dock

Thelma and Randy joined us for a Lawsons weekend.

Lawsons is one of the only privately owned/operated parks in Cali that is directly on the beach. Located on a spit of land near Dillon Beach it offers access to the ocean as well as Tomales Bay. Dillon Beach was founded in the 1400’s by the famous folksinger Bob Dillon. There is a statue of him as you enter the village.

It was a full moon minus tide so the Bay was crawling with Clammers in all manner of craft.

We squatted at a site on the seawall looking for Four Men and a Calm but they were nowhere to be seen.

It was blowing hard on Saturday so we drove into to Pt Reyes Station for lunch. We worked it off with a nice flat hike at Bear Valley where we found the wildflowers showing off. Mostly Poppies and Lupine.

Some very cool hiking trails in Pt Reyes.

SO MANY POPPIES

The boat never left the trailer due to wind