On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 20:45:22 -0500, axolotl wrote:

On 1/2/2011 8:23 PM, William Bagwell wrote:


Maternity colony, so more like bat bordellos than bleachers.
I recently have been seeing expanded
*cardboard* being used as packing materiel.

A couple of ideas. Old sawmills sometimes used a shop built rotary
planer- a horizontal spinning disc of wood with a single tooth sticking
down. If the rough sawn wood was fed slowly, you got a smoother plank.
If fed too fast, you got a series of arcs across the face of the lumber.
You could feed fast.

Need to Google this sometime. Sounds almost like a fly cutter.

Plan B would be to purchase 1/4" corrugated cardboard honeycomb as is
used in packing, lay it on the plywood, and spray it with acrylic for
weather protection and adhesion.

The corrugated sounds good but not the cardboard. Don't think it would be
simple to keep it from falling apart in the presence of bat urine.

Plan C?

Recycle the tread of old tires. Charge more because the bat bordello is
now green.

Someone has already experimented with old tire tread on the outside of bat
houses.
http://bathouseforum.org/forum/old-t...it=tires#p4652

If you stayed away from bald slick tires it might possibly work for an interior
surface as well. I want to experiment with small amounts of sand mixed with the
plastic. (Rotomolding) Not sure it will be rough enough for the bats to cling
to. Worth a try...

Plan D?

Buy the bark slab at the sawmill that is usually burned as waste. Use it
inside out to build the bathouse.

Slabs would probably be too rounded, but I also want to try making a few
baffles the same way they make bark shingles. Siding not roof, and not kidding
here! Traditionally American chestnut was used and there are still a few
surviving examples. Tulip popular is a poor substitute. Probably actually
easier to work with than chestnut however I can not imagine it lasting anywhere
near as long.
--
William