If someone were to tell me this feeder was made by little kids as a school project I wouldn’t say anything. If someone told me this was made by handicapped people and sold for them I wouldn’t say anything. I didn’t see any of that when I was looking at this item on-line from various vendors. This wasn’t exactly the feeder I was looking for, but it was in the under $20 price range. Any more than that and I would have just made one. The threshold for my laziness was therefore $20.
Purchased mine from Ace hardware on-line. Other than possibly shipping me their “best” one, neither they nor the shipper are at fault for this. The manufacturer simply has no quality control in place. Adding insult to injury they are using the Audubon name. I associate this kind of quality with North Korean knock-offs.
The plastic slide in the front was simply cut to the wrong size and someone forced it in. I could barely get it out. It had a hard bow in it from being compressed like that. If you tried to put it in the other way it was a bit short on one end.
Adding insult to injury the lid wasn’t even close to straight. A bit of inspection showed that the hing was fastened at an angle. Whoever did it noticed the problem and rounded out one of the Phillips screws trying to correct the error. That was the extend of their effort though. I had to back that baby out using needle nose pliers. It was too small of a screw head to risk a screw extractor.
Once I got the lid straightened out I put the plastic back in and went to mount the thing on a tree in the yard. Boom! Big split in the side. The wood could no longer take the constant force of the plastic being wedged in place.
You can see the hole from moving
front with bow before trimming
Nice big split
Gorilla Glue overnight
Yes, I glued it without the screws in, then put the screws in before I took the clamp off. It was then I noticed the bottom doesn’t even fit right.
big gap in bottom
I wasn’t thinking this morning and first reached for my very fine bladed jig saw.
after jig saw attempt
That looks way worse than it was due to the close up. After that I dug out my Rotozip. Literally I mean dig it out. I’ve owned the thing for decades and used it maybe 3 times. Today was the fourth.
after Rotozip image
I can never do a straight cut with my Rotozip. I assume someone can, just not me. Again it looks far worse than it was due to close up. Thankfully this front plastic was cut so long I had a large margin of error.
Feeder all fixed and mounted
If you look close you can see a bit of an opening in the lower right corner of the clear plastic front. According to some of the ads the squirrels are supposed to be able to slide the plastic up to get the nuts from the bottom. No way they were doing that with the way the front originally fit. That little missing nick gives them a good place to grab.
Update: 20200215
It sure didn’t take long for the squirrels to bust that cheap piece of plastic.
