For the last few weeks, Pinterest has been flooding my newsfeed with DIY bird Feeders so I took it as a sign to make one.  I am not a big fan of birds, but my sister loves them. On a daily basis, she has loads of king parrots that come to her house for feeding.  She has been feeding them for so many years now they will even eat out of her hands.

With this in mind, I thought I would make her a new bird feeder for her regular visitors.

How to Make a Bird Feeder Bar

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Find suitable wood

For this project, I used pallet wood but you can use any suitable wood. Because pallets are made to sit outside in the weather they are perfect for this project. Start but cutting the wood from the pallet, a jigsaw works great for this. Cut all the wood between the supports. I have tried in the past to take a pallet apart which proved really difficult for me.

Using whatever sander you have, remove all the rough edges from the pallet wood. This is to prevent hurting the birds when they are eating.

To remove all the damaged edges from the wood you can use a table saw to trim about 50 mm of each side.

Cut the wood to size

To make this stand you will need to cut your wood to the following

1 x 400 mm x 200 mm x 20 mm (Base)

2 x 400 mm x 90 mm x 20 mm (Sides)

1 x 360 mm x 90 mm 20 mm (Feeding tray)

2 x 360 mm x 20 mm x 20 mm (Feeding tray supports)

20 x 500 mm x 90 mm x 20 mm (Roof)

For the bar stools, I used parts from a broken chair, but you can use some dowels and a chunk of wood.

Assemble the bird feeder

To join the wood together a pocket hole jig will work great because it will hide all the screws. If you do not have a pocket hole jig you can drill the holes.

Start by pre-drilling holes in the bottom to screw the side supports onto the base. I always pre-drill pallet wood because I have found it is so dry from being outside in the sun that it does tend to split. Add some glue and screw the two pieces of wood together.

To make the feeding trough, drill holes in the bottom and screw in the side supports for the trough. This will prevent all the food from fall out if it rains. The trough can then be screwed into the side supports. Again, if you don’t use a pocket hole jig you can just screw it together from the outside.

Using a large drill bit, drill holes into the base for the bar stools. The size will depend on the dowel you buy or you can use a branch as a stool.

Making the bar stools

The barstools were made from spindles off a broken chair, I used a hand saw to cut them in half. Using wood glue, glue them into the holes in the base.

Making the roof

Cutting a roof at the correct angle is not as simple as I thought it would be, there is a mathematical equation that was well over my head. So I took the easy way out and joined the wood the simple way. Using the pocket hole join again.

The result of this was that one side of the roof was longer than the other. I used a table saw to cut away the excess wood, so both sides were even.

How to age the wood

I was not very happy with the look of the bird feeder, In my opinion, it looked too polished. My idea was to try and give it a weathered look as if it had been outside for years. Using a grinder and a sanding disc I roughed up the surface of the wood before staining the wood. To get the weathered wood look, a friend of mine Michelle from Acraftymix had the solution. She makes up her own stains using rusty nails.

I made up my solution as per her recipe and within two days I had a suitable stain. Using steel wood dipped in the stain I applied it to all the wood, and this was the result.

Attaching the roof

This is where my project came unstuck, I gave no thought as to how I was going to attach the roof. And unfortunately, my side supports were too short. Once the roof was fitted, there was not enough gap for the birds to get to the food. This is what happens when you make up projects as you go along.

Using another scrap of pallet wood I extended the side supports and cut it to the angle of the roof. To join the extension to the sides, you guessed it, I used the pocket hole jig.

The roof was then glued onto the side supports and secured using a nail gun. You can screw them in if you don’t mind seeing the screw heads. Using a very technical method, the roof was weighted down while the glue was drying.

Adding some decoration

Just for a bit of fun, I added a sign to both sides of the roof. To make the signs I used scrap MDF and cut two shapes freehand using a jigsaw. Using the homemade wood stain I stained the wood and sealed it with an exterior varnish.

I don’t have nice handwriting so I made some vinyl decals using a Cricut vinyl cutter.

You can use a silicone adhesive to attach the signs, I also added studs for a decorative look. Apart from the mess up with the side supports, I love how the bird feeder turned out. And I think the king parrots would agree.

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