Between the squirrels and the raccoons around here, it's hard to keep a bird feeder in one piece. I'll dismantle that wreckage, and see if there's a way I can reconstruct the shattered tray/platform.
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It's a start.
There are all the pieces I could find, reassembled and glued together with CA adhesive. I'll make a sheet aluminum disk for the underside. That will serve to at least cover the voids, and as reinforcement for the glue-joined pieces.
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Here's the disk cut to size.
The masking tape was for marking the perimeter with a pencil in a compass, so I'd have a nice, high-contrast line to follow with the snips. The centre-hole was cut with a small fly cutter. That aluminum is 0.024" thick, so it was pretty easy material to work with.
I'll get everything clean, rig a gravity clamp and bond the metal disc to the underside of the pan with clear silicone sealant.
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Here's the underside repair completed.
As a further reinforcement of my lamination job, I drilled through in several places and tapped the holes for short 6-32 screws. I installed the screws with CA adhesive applied as a threadlocker. I also drilled through the aluminum at all of the original drainage hole locations, and deburred all of those holes. Here's a view of the top side.
I'll fill those two voids with slow-setting epoxy. When that's fully cured, I'll repaint it, and I'll have a serviceable bird feeder base pan again. I doubt that the birds will mind the flaws.
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Here it is, almost paint-ready.
The epoxy fill turned out fairly well. The reddish stuff is autobody spot putty that I'd smeared over all the seams and sanded. I have a little more of that to do on the outside of the rim, then I can repaint the thing. It won't be flawless by any stretch of the imagination, but it'll serve.
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All Done -- FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2013
Here it is fully repainted and reassembled.
All I need now is a good photograph of 'customers' dining at it, and this post will be well and truly done.
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