Bracing LegsThe first piece of the project that I completed this week was bracing the legs of the frame. This was necessary because it gives the blind extra support. Any extra support is very helpful because I am going to be sitting in the blind, so I would like for it to not collapse or fall down. To do this I attached four 2 by 4’s onto the legs of the blind with a nail gun. This step went on without any challenges at all. Plywood FloorThe second thing I did this week was cut out a piece of plywood for the floor of the blind. I used 3/4 inch plywood so the floor can be much stronger. The frame of the floor has extra supports so it would probably have been fine to use thinner plywood, but it can not hurt to have more support in the floor. I used a circular saw to cut the plywood to 48ft by 48ft, which is the size of the frame. This was relatively easy to do. The only challenging part was to get the dimensions to be exactly the right size. The next part was to secure the plywood floor to the lower frame. I used a nail gun to secure the plywood floor to the lower frame of the blind. When doing this I made sure to put in way more nails than needed. I did this so that the plywood floor would not move at all and because over time some of the nails may come out of place, so if there are extra nails then the plywood should stay secure for a very long time. The lower piece of the blind is now completely finished. It appears to be very sturdy and strong which is definitely a good thing
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FloorThis week I finally started working on the deer blind. The first step in the process was to build the lower floor of the blind. I am making the floor of the deer blind 4ft by 4ft. This size was chosen because the pallets that I am going to use for the wall are that long and there's no way for me to alter the length of the pallets. For the floor I made a square with one piece of wood in the middle for supports. The building of this piece of the project went relatively smoothly. The only problem I ran into was using too short of nails to secure pieces to each other. This caused the boards to come apart because they were not held together strongly enough. All I needed to do to fix this problem was redo the nails with longer screws. I plan to later put a piece of plywood over the floor so I can stand on it. Unfortunately I did not have the plywood, so I will have to wait until next week to finish the floor of the blind. Lower supportsThis week I also completed the lower supports of the blind. The 4 by 4 board that I had purchased earlier for the lower supports was 8ft long. I cut the board into four 2ft long pieces to use to raise the blind of the ground. It is lower than I had originally planned, but with the price of wood being so high right, it is all I really want to pay for now. Attaching the posts to the floor was quite easy to do. Next weekNext week I plan to brace the lower legs of the blind, cut the plywood for the floor, and install the plywood onto the floor. I do need to purchase the wood to finish that piece next week. However, there should be no problem with completing this piece.
LocationThis week for my Genius Hour project I located and cleared out an area for my deer blind. The location is in a small clearing in a wooded area behind my house. The location being near my house will allow for it to be easily accessible or me to work on. The location is also definitely good enough for me to hunt in. I cleared brush away from the area where I wanted to place the blind. Doing this was not hard, just very time consuming. I also raked back the leaves to get to the dirt. This was very easy to do and took very little time at all. The ground is slightly uneven so I will have to dig into the ground to make sure that the blind can be completely level. This may be challenging to do, but there's no other location that I can place the blind that is better, so I will just have to work around it. Next week I should be ready to start on the construction of the base of the blind. New plansLast week I mentioned that I am probably going to need to change my plans for the blind. I need to do this because the cost of lumber right now would make the blind incredibly expensive. While I was researching for new plans, I found plans that used pallets to build the frame of the blind. This is perfect for me because my dad has hundreds of pallets where he works, so it will be very easy and cheap for me to get the materials for the blind. The frame will still need to be made out of wooden posts, but it will still be very cheap when compared to what the price was originally going to be. The roof can be made mostly out of pallets, but some other pieces will need to be added to keep water out of the blind.
MaterialsI was able to go to Lowe's hardware this week and acquire some of the needed materials. I had planned on using some of my dad's materials, but he did not have anything that I could use. At Lowes I purchased enough to get started with my project, but definitely not enough for the entire project. This is because lumber prices are extremely high right now and I am hoping that if I wait to get the rest of the materials the prices will go down some. The materials I have now will be used to build the base of the deer blind. I purchased 4x4 posts and 2x4 boards to build the base of the deer blind. ProblemsThe price of would being so high could lead to a very big problem. I am currently hoping that the prices will go down, but there's really no way to know what is going to happen. Thankfully the prices have been slowly dropping, but they are still very high. If the prices continue to stay as high as they are now, I am going to half to change the plans of the blind to make it smaller. Making the blind smaller will definitely make the overall cost lower, but it will be challenging to change the plans halfway through the project. I was originally planning to build a 4x8 deer blind that was 10ft high. I do not want to change the height of the deer blind because it is much easier to hunt when you are raised up off the ground. However, there is a very good chance that I may need to change the overall size. The size I was planning to do would fit 3 to 4 people. I am thinking that I may need to change the plan so that it fits 2 people instead. It could not go any smaller than a two person stand though.
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AuthorI'm Ty and these blog posts are to show off my progress for my Genius Hour project. Archives
May 2021
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