Birdhouse roof - copper working?

[Denette]

So I have build the most ridiculous birdhouse I could build:

The design I made in Sketchup looks like this:

But now I'm wondering how well a wooden roof would hold up. As you may be able to tell, I built this thing 100% from wood, with mortises & tenons, floating panel sides, made from cypress with white oak panels. I want this thing to last.

So my questions/comments are:

1. Would a wooden roof be ok? If so, what should the grain orientation be? Should it be made from multiple pieces, or should I laminate a huge chunk and cut the roof out from that big piece?

2. If I were to, say, buy some copper, how would I work that into a roof shaped similarly to the Sketchup drawing? Would I need to weld? I have no tools or skills for welding...

[Tom Cancelleri]

What about a wooden roof with copper cladding, and some clever crimps and folds to keep water from getting to the wood

[Tpt life]

Copper is easy to solder with the correct media. Just grab someone local to help you through the purchase. Copper that small can be bent with a hand brake. With care you can make a standing folded seam roof that will not require solder. Search YouTube for copper roofing how to and then just fab or ask more questions. 

Oh yeah, Tom caught something I missed. Start with a wooden deck. 

[shaneymack]

Cheaper/easier option is wood frame with cedar shingles.

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

[Tpt life]

If you do cedar shingles a couple of thoughts. Good luck finding them sized properly for one. Also, you are going to put a few hundred staples or tacks in that roof. Make sure to use a self sealing membrane and don't just rely on hiding the fasteners. The shingles will trap moisture against the roof deck. 

[mat60]

I agree on a membrane ..You can just cut down the shingles..I think it will look good and wife will love it..

[Ronn W]

Nice detail work. I like it a lot. 

[Andy Wright]

It would be easy to make this shape with a single sheet of copper - just make a form out of wood to use as a sheet metal brake clamp the copper in, and bend it. Look for some YouTube videos on bending sheet metal

The other option is to use cedar shake shingles as mentioned above. You can cut them to a smaller size on your table saw. If you install a membrane under the shingles it will be fine. Look for some directions on installing cedar shake shingles and just scale everything down

[JosephThomas]

No roofing experience here, we don't need them in southern California.  Just stopped by to say it looks nice! Keep posting pics as you work on the roof...

[Tom King]

It wouldn't take much copper.  A pair of hand seamers would be the only tool you need other than snips.  You would only need double folded standing seams at the hips.  A couple of clips made from strips of copper, and folded into the standing seam hold it on the roof.  You could get fancy and fold the drip back under for stiffness, and to keep it straight.  I've done a whole, complicated house roof with copper.  It's on my website.

You can order different sizes of sheets of copper off the internet.  Last I looked, it was about ten bucks a square foot.  Get 16 oz. quarter-hard copper.  Copper flashing is typically dead soft, and doesn't lay down as neatly as quarter hard.

I'll never use Cedar shingles again, even though I have shakes on this house we're living in.  After finding a roof that Cypress shingles had lasted 132 years, I'll be sticking with that.  We make the shingles too. I couldn't find any commercially made ones that suited me.  There is also a partial page of Cypress shingles on my website. No to membrane, unless you want to limit the life of the shingles.  I would only install wooden shingles over open purlins, even on a birdhouse.  Expose one third of a shingle length, and cut the taper so the tops hit a plane.  Taper varies with butt thickness, exposure, and length.  I expose one fourth on a house.  I use a sled I made on a bandsaw to cut two out of boards cut to the finished shingle length.

We have a Martin box high on a pole on the end of our point that has had 1/4" Mahogany shingles on it for probably 30 years, and is still okay.

It might be hard to make a standing doublefeld seam less than 1/2" high.  Fold one edge up 1" along a hip.  Fold the meeting edge up 3/4".  Fold the high part of the one inch leg down over the 3/4" leg.  Fold the top 1/4" or so of both again in the same direction. 

For a house roof, we typically use a 1-1/2" finished standing seam.  I have a couple of hand tools that fold it together for each of the two folds.

For copper hips, like on your birdhouse, I use a hammer and bucking bar for aircraft rivets.  Hips on a house have thick parts where you double fold the standing seams that are flattened out.  Those spots get too thick to fold with hand seamers, but a hammer and bucking bar (you can use two hammers, but a bucking bar has a small edge to get into tight places) make easy work out of it, although it does take some time.  You won't have that trouble since you can make one sheet cover each side.

Get a little extra copper to practice with first.

Sorry, I probably mixed up instructions for copper and wooden shingles.  Let me know if anything is confusing.

My bucking bar looks a lot like the one in the upper right in this set.  Any heavy piece of metal will do with copper.  You use it on the opposite side of the seam from the hammer, and you can flatten the folded layers nicely.  http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rivet-Bucking-Bar-Set-/120890199104?hash=item1c259e0c40:m:mExpWRdkh82UPgEDx3F18rA

[Coop]

I did something similar to this, cutting each shingle by hand and gluing it to the ply top with construction adhesive.

[Unknown craftsman]

You guys sure like your birdies in Arkansas.I vote for copper too.

@Tom KingWestern red cedar is really cypress,And every bit as good as Baldcypress I now this to be true because I walked on some very old shingle roofs.Here in California.

5 inch exposure three layers thick properly hand nailed it's as good as it gets.

8 hours ago, Tom King said:

It wouldn't take much copper.  A pair of hand seamers would be the only tool you need other than snips.  You would only need double folded standing seams at the hips.  A couple of clips made from strips of copper, and folded into the standing seam hold it on the roof.  You could get fancy and fold the drip back under for stiffness, and to keep it straight.  I've done a whole, complicated house roof with copper.  It's on my website.

You can order different sizes of sheets of copper off the internet.  Last I looked, it was about ten bucks a square foot.  Get 16 oz. quarter-hard copper.  Copper flashing is typically dead soft, and doesn't lay down as neatly as quarter hard.

I'll never use Cedar shingles again, even though I have shakes on this house we're living in.  After finding a roof that Cypress shingles had lasted 132 years, I'll be sticking with that.  We make the shingles too. I couldn't find any commercially made ones that suited me.  There is also a partial page of Cypress shingles on my website. No to membrane, unless you want to limit the life of the shingles.  I would only install wooden shingles over open purlins, even on a birdhouse.  Expose one third of a shingle length, and cut the taper so the tops hit a plane.  Taper varies with butt thickness, exposure, and length.  I expose one fourth on a house.  I use a sled I made on a bandsaw to cut two out of boards cut to the finished shingle length.

We have a Martin box high on a pole on the end of our point that has had 1/4" Mahogany shingles on it for probably 30 years, and is still okay.

It might be hard to make a standing doublefeld seam less than 1/2" high.  Fold one edge up 1" along a hip.  Fold the meeting edge up 3/4".  Fold the high part of the one inch leg down over the 3/4" leg.  Fold the top 1/4" or so of both again in the same direction. 

For a house roof, we typically use a 1-1/2" finished standing seam.  I have a couple of hand tools that fold it together for each of the two folds.

For copper hips, like on your birdhouse, I use a hammer and bucking bar for aircraft rivets.  Hips on a house have thick parts where you double fold the standing seams that are flattened out.  Those spots get too thick to fold with hand seamers, but a hammer and bucking bar (you can use two hammers, but a bucking bar has a small edge to get into tight places) make easy work out of it, although it does take some time.  You won't have that trouble since you can make one sheet cover each side.

Get a little extra copper to practice with first.

Sorry, I probably mixed up instructions for copper and wooden shingles.  Let me know if anything is confusing.

My bucking bar looks a lot like the one in the upper right in this set.  Any heavy piece of metal will do with copper.  You use it on the opposite side of the seam from the hammer, and you can flatten the folded layers nicely.  http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rivet-Bucking-Bar-Set-/120890199104?hash=item1c259e0c40:m:mExpWRdkh82UPgEDx3F18rA

 

[Coop]

I displace the the starlings, trap and relocate the friggin sparrows and leave as much free space as possible for the Purple Martins while allowing the Mockimgbirds and Cardinals to share in the tomato crop. Nothing to do what so ever, with woodworking?

[Unknown craftsman]

In the spring it would not be unusual to find me out in the back yard.Throwing sticks rocks and anything else I can get my hands on at the mocking birds.Pipeing off high in my live oak tree. They party all night long...

Stupid birds!

[..Kev]

We use fake owls placed about to keep the unwanted nuisance birds away

[woodbutcher74]

I've built three owl houses and hung them in our trees, We now have a family of screech owls living in the back yard. They keep a lot of pests populations down. 

[Tpt life]

7 hours ago, Aj3 said:

You guys sure like your birdies in Arkansas.I vote for copper too.

@Tom KingWestern red cedar is really cypress,And every bit as good as Baldcypress I now this to be true because I walked on some very old shingle roofs.Here in California.

5 inch exposure three layers thick properly hand nailed it's as good as it gets.

 

Orangutan and human are in the same family. There is a lot of difference that comes with genus and species. I have not seen a 130 year old roof here and I see a lot of cedar. I tend to go with Tom's leaning. Having said that, I live around several slate roofs and think they look nice. Like copper, I don't think that says woodworker though. 

[Unknown craftsman]

Roofing is my wheel house since I did 99 percent of it here in California.It wouldn't surprise me if other parts of the county things were done different and worked better.

So much depends on whether ,materials ,installer.

Out here we have small shingle,And different size shakes light, med,jumbo.

But most just call them shingles.

Just like everyone calls cypress cedar.

Im just trying to share some knowledge to increase everyone's power.

.

I don't want to debate Tom no way,Not with a last name King.

I also like slate roofs but I've only a couple.

 

 Aj

[Tom King]

The name "shake" is a fairly modern one.  I'm not sure when it was first used.  They were always called shingles, even when the only way they were made was split by hand for hundreds of years.  I found the shipping records for the port of Edenton, NC for the three years before the Revolutionary War.  16 million Cypress shingles were shipped out of there those three years.  Edenton is surrounded by a Cypress covered swamp.

One of the interesting things about the 132 year old Cypress roof we found was that it was on a roof only 4-1/2 in 12 pitch. I have never seen wooden shingles on a roof that low pitched, but they were still fine.   I really only started my research into Cypress shingles after finding that roof. Not one shingle on that roof had twisted or curled, which I do see a lot of on Cedar roofs once they get some age on them.

I have Cedar shakes on part of my house that I built in 1980.  It's still in good shape because it's installed on open purlins so it can breathe. It's the only one around here that I know of that has that much age on it.  We've replaced a Cedar shake roof less than 35 years old because it was put on according to the Cedar Bureau with strips of tar paper in every row.  I guess they were afraid the shakes would leak, but that really makes a tar paper roof, and doesn't allow the shingles to breathe.

I've repaired a slate roof, damaged by people walking on it that didn't know what they were doing, but I've never installed one from the start.  There are a few around here, but all on 20th Century houses.

[-MattK-]

10 hours ago, TIODS said:

We use fake owls placed about to keep the unwanted nuisance birds away

We had a problem with black birds dropping poop in the pool.  Apparently the babies poop into a fecal sac and the mother birds take that and drop it in a body of water so predators won't be able to find their nests.  (this is all from google searches, I don't know a thing about birds)

Anyway, we tried the fake owl.  My wife was moving it to a new location (gotta keep surprising the birds with your fake owl placement!) and a blackbird flew over her and scored a direct hit with a bag of poop on the owl's head!  Guess they weren't that impressed!

We also tried an alligator head in the pool.... that didn't work.  This year we just opened the pool later - but they still bombed the hell out of the pool cover!

 

[Brendon_t]

12 hours ago, Aj3 said:

In the spring it would not be unusual to find me out in the back yard.Throwing sticks rocks and anything else I can get my hands on at the mocking birds.Pipeing off high in my live oak tree. They party all night long...

Stupid birds!

I have nothing to add other than sweet bird house.  

Aj where in cali are you? 

[Unknown craftsman]

1 hour ago, Brendon_t said:

I have nothing to add other than sweet bird house.  

Aj where in cali are you? 

Claremont and yourself?

[Brendon_t]

Simi Valley.  Southern ventura county

[ncfowler]

not knowing the size but maybe you can find a pre fab copper top like ones they sell at lowes, if you goolge it you may find ones more of your liking,

 

[Denette]

OK, so I haven't made it into the shop, but I have decided on a design!  The local Hobby Lobby had a nice 2'x1' sheet of copper that seems thick enough, so I bought it.  I'm planning on going with a design something like this for the roof:

 

Where the orangish part is the copper wrapped over a wood panel, with the edges tucked underneath.

I appreciate all the feedback on this!

Shingles don't seem like the best option, especially considering the small scale of this project.  It's roughly 10" square, and a little taller.  It's not huge.  Those panels in the sides are ¼" thick, and the posts at the corners are only 1 ½" square.