Here are a couple of the image ads we’re now using. These get served by Google AdWords for folks in the Austin area.

Learn how to build your own Eastern / Western Screech Owl House. We’ve put together a series of videos which will walk you through the process. Enjoy!

After the Christmas break I spent a bit of time making scale model versions of our Screech Owl Box, Woodpecker House, and Leopold Bench. These are our showroom display models:

A number of people expressed interest in these 1/3rd scale miniatures, so we decided to make up a batch for sale. Here is our mini assembly line of Owl Boxes & Woodpecker Houses:

They are made of Cedar and will be stained with a Redwood colored toner.

During our road trip out to California for Christmas, Evelyn and I talked a bit about our products. Improvements to existing models, figuring out the solutions to problems, and coming up with new “hair brained” schemes. Road trips in open country are great for this. You’re zipping along with not much to see and not much traffic to worry about. And you are stuck there for 10 hours. Thinking back on it now, most of our best product ideas have come up during trips like these.

One of the items that came out of our discussions was that we needed a starter coop in our product lineup. Something which would compete in price with the imports and be our answer to the “chicken tractor”.  The chicken tractor is an open bottomed lightweight coop. They are often built and not purchased. Inexpensive poultry netting and 2x4s are commonly the materials of choice. And, quite frankly, they look too much like chicken coops.

Now remember our design mantra, taken from the Japanese master Eiko Ishioka: Timeless, Revolutionary, Original.

When we develop a new product, or enhance an existing one, we try very very hard to live up to those three words. Our products should age well (timeless), include features not found elsewhere (revolutionary), and have our own unique take on the solution (original). This is very hard to do. Sometimes we start with traditional designs, then apply our own reasoning. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The key is to apply that benchmark. If we meet those three words we know the product will be solid and something to be proud of.

This new coop would have to meet a slew of requirements:

• Lightweight. At least lighter than our other models.
• An all-in-one solution, like the chicken tractors. Meaning an integrated nesting area and run.
• Low profile. We wanted a “stealth” chicken coop.
• Use SUM Framework. These are the core items that can be used across products (ex. Doors, Roofs, Core Frames, etc).
• Integrate with existing products. It should be able to connect to the same Runs and to other SUM Coops.
• Be as inexpensive as possible. It should be competitive with imported kits.

After cleaning up the shop over the New Year, we started the prototype build on Sunday.

By Tuesday we were figuring out full versus half roof:

By Thursday we had the sides, doors, and the interior complete:

By Friday it was sanded and ready for sealing with Linseed Oil:

Not bad for a week of work. From a pile of lumber to a finished product. And we’re talking done-done. Timings complete. Materials priced out. Labor calculated. Final price determined. Store updated.

Some key concepts that allow us to do this:

• Building off of the SUM Framework. While everything for the prototype was scratch built, we used many of our existing building blocks. The doors and door rails used here are the same as found on the Crestview High Rise Chicken Coop and the Brentwood Deluxe Chicken Coop.
• Knowing the best way of attaching tricky components, such as the roof and the Hardware Cloth. (Part of our “secret sauce”.)
• Breaking the problem up into subsystems. Get the core done. We know how to do doors, so don’t worry about that. Figure out the nesting area. The side screens. The roof. Each of these components then gets put together to made a final product. (This also means you spend less time [money] on custom fitting.)
• Keeping the end product in mind and eschewing iterative development.

That last point will likely raise the eyebrows of more than one software developer, where iterative development is a mantra. But I have no use for it in products like this. First, they just aren’t that complicated. Second, I know all of the requirements — or I can make them up as I go. This is mostly a one-man job, so all that stuff is in my head during the design & build. Third, I can’t afford to go down paths, scrap, and rebuild. I hate wasting materials more than I hate wasting my time. This is where making physical things is very different from virtual (software). Scrapping code is cheaper than scrapping tangible items. When you scrap code you lose time and labor. When you scrap a door frame you lose time, labor, and materials.

Now comes the hard part: Marketing & Selling them.

Before Christmas I had built a 1/3rd scale Owl Box. This morning I decided to “break in” the new shop with a small build: More Miniatures.

Here is the Mini Owl Box, V2. It’s the same design as the first, except I’ve stained it Redwood.

Since I’ve been playing around with Woodpecker box prototypes, I did one of those also:

It even has the sliding clean-out door in the bottom.

Finally, I built a small scale Leopold Bench. This one’s proportions are a bit off, because I didn’t have the right wood to scale it properly. But it came out pretty good nonetheless.

It’s kinda funny. I think the mini and Child Leopold’s look better than the Adult one. For some reason the tighter gaps between pieces makes them look better to my eye.

Here is the set of three:

The pieces aren’t exactly scaled to each other, due to the limitations in the lumber I had on hand (everything was done in 1×4 cedar). However, they are pretty close. Once they are dry I’ll take a photo with me next to them, for additional scale.

I built this for my parents to have. It’s an Eastern Screech Owl Box, sized to about 1/3rd scale.

Here it is next to the regular version, so you can get a better idea of the scale:

The last couple of days have been very busy. We’ve been working on Christmas orders for Owl Boxes (the ideal gift for the husband who has everything!), prototyping of new finishes, figuring out Woodpecker house design, and more.

Let’s start outside. Here are three completed Eastern Screech Owl boxes. Once they are stained/finished they are placed outside. I hang them from part of our fence, behind the shed. This allows them to weather a bit (so I can see if any wood is going to crack) and helps to remove the stain & human scents on the wood.

These Leopold benches have been outside for a couple of months now. They are holding up well.

In the shop now. I’ve had to better organize a couple of things, and needed a couple of quick-fix solutions.

On the organization front, I set up a new storage area for my Speed Squares. The one on the left is my newest one. Since I do so many “free hand” 22.5 degree cuts (the angles of the bird box roofs), I have it fixed at that angle. The included rail makes it a lot easier. I LOVE the heft of this square. It’s worth the $20. (There’s a YouTube video up at SixtySecondShop.)

To the right is the 12″ plastic and the 6″ plastic. Bright orange is good in a crowded shop. Though, I did have to mark in the numbers myself using a fine tipped Sharpie. (The non-highlighted numbers are hard to read. Make them stand out with the black Sharpie. Five minutes of work that will pay off forever.)

Here’s my jury rigged router table fence. I still have a Incra on my wish list, but this will do for now.

It’s simply a straight 1×8 clamped to my large (36″ wide) homemade router table. Since I am only making some very simple dado (slot) cuts for the bottom of the Woodpecker boxes, I didn’t need anything fancy. Just something that will keep me at the correct distance. Running them on the table is faster than straight edges and free hand.

Notice that I did bolt on a piece of scrap acrylic as a guard. The table is a LOT safer with it in place. At the least, you never loose track of where the sharp bits are at.

Here are some of the Owl and Woodpecker boxes sitting in the shop. They are in various states of completion.

The labels on the ground help me to keep track of where in the process boxes are (“WIP”, “needs stain”, “needs silicon”, “complete”). The taller boxes are for the Eastern Screech Owls. The smaller ones are for common Woodpeckers. I need to complete their sliding bottoms and a protector around the entry hole (to stop squirrels).

Those funky colored ones are our newest invention. We call it Fire Polishing. It allows us to give the wood a natural dark finish with no stains. They are available as Limited Edition models (due to the labor involved).

They look even better in person. The wood has an iridescent quality. The boxes will weather to a gray / black color scheme. Almost exactly like “regular” tree bark.

We *try* and be considerate neighbors, so I drop the garage door whenever I’m doing a lot of cutting. Unfortunately this means I often don’t know if a customer is outside. Back in the day I made an ultra-loud door bell setup for my Dad’s repair business. I could do the same thing here!

So I put together a small wooden box, painted it red, and gave it a big arcade button. This box gets hung outside of the garage:

It’s about 7″ tall. Right now I’m putting in a flashing LED in the front (that white dot you see) so as to catch peoples’ eyes. I think it’s a neat use of the “One Player” arcade button, don’t you?

Here are a couple of video we made about the boxes. At the least, check out the Construction & Quality one.

We’re happy to announce that we have expanded our product line to include Owl Boxes. You can think of them as big bird boxes. The first model is designed for Eastern Screech Owls. It’s about 28″ tall with a 4″ opening. They came out pretty nicely and are very sturdy.

You can find more information at our business blog: Austin Kontore : Owl Boxes

Been spending the past couple of days setting up our new web store. This will allow people to order our products on-line. It’s coming along pretty nicely and will really come into play once we have more products (I’ve a couple ideas for outdoor furniture). Take a look and let me know what you think.