First of all, each Committeeman made one birdhouse, using the pattern shown here and an old apple crate or scrap lumber. That was to prepare the Committeeman to help the boys. It also gave us a start with ten houses.
Then each Scout was given a copy of the pattern and asked to make a house in the next week. Most of the fellows came through and we had twenty more. Now we were ready for mass production.
We scouted the lumberyards in town, and the building projects for scrap lumber—1″ thick boards in various lengths and widths. Everyone was cooperative and we got all the wood we needed. We bought the nails, and then looked around for a “basement shop” or woodworking hobbyist to help us prefabricate the birdhouses. The power saw was easily found, and we went to work sawing up the boards to the proper sizes.
Birdhouses were used first in Scout Week window display and later were placed out in orchard country.
Frederick Avery Photo
Wolf Photo
Then we tied up the boards into “kits,” each kit containing all the makings of a house. In Patrol Meetings, the Scouts assembled the houses. That gave us something over 150 more houses.
Window Display
When the houses were complete, just before Scout Week, we gathered them all together and built our window display. The photo shows what it looked like. But the photo doesn’t show all the interest it aroused.
Mapping
The craft work “bird” and the window display were knocked off—now for setting up the houses. The Buffalo Ornithological Society helped us, and we placed them along fifty miles of highways radiating out from town. The houses were placed in orchard country, with the approval of the land owners. Each group made a sketch map of the roads along which they set up houses, and we put the segments together to make a large map showing the location of all the houses.