Supposedly if you are doing an outside project, using treated lumber means that your project should weather longer. I'm inexperienced when it comes to working with treated lumber. I have been told that I need to be more careful sawing up treated lumber versus working with those projects that use untreated lumber. I know that any scraps of treated lumber are not to burned. You need to wear glasses and a dust mask when sawing treated lumber. It's said that one should even wear gloves when handling treated lumber. It's best that when you're doing a project using treated lumber that you do a little homework about treated lumber before you start.
Now that I have that disclaimer statement out of the way, I have to address the problem of what does one do with left over scraps once one is done with their project. I know of someone who was building a back yard fence using treated lumber and he had an easy solution as to what to do with his left over pieces. He gave them to me. (What a buddy.) As you can see from the picture on the right, most of his scraps were about 12 inches or so in length and nice clean boards. 
I decided to use some of these scraps of free wood to build a bird feeder in the shape of a log cabin. I have completed this project twice before, getting the plans from "Best Weekend Woodworking Projects" issued in 1999 (Although I've never been able to build one in a weekend.) The first thing one has to do with small boards is to make bigger boards. Out come the clamps and glue. I go through the process of trying to make sure any knots and defects will end up being on the ends that are likely to be sawed off. 
We will need 5 larger sections altogether, 3 large sections for the roof, 1 main section to be used as a based, and one section needs to be placed as a slide on the inside of the cabin. You can see the rough cut sections to the right. These have been glued with Titebond II glue which is an exterior water resistant glue. I like working with the Titebond glues, but this is my first experience of gluing up pressure treated lumber. I don't know if that makes a difference or not. (So far, so good.)
Once the larger sections have been trimmed to size, the next step is to cut up little logs that are 3/4" by 3/4" at varied lengths. Each log is run through the router table so that there is a 45 degree chamfering on each edge of the log. (Needless to say, this is where you listen to a murder mystery on an audio tape to help pass the time.) Once you have a pile of logs at the various required sizes you start to build each of the four individual walls. 
When the four walls have been completed, you have to cut out the window areas and rabbet out those areas to hold plexiglass. The plan calls for 1/8 " plexiglass for all windows, but I use a heavier 1/4 inch for the front window. I have found that squirrels will easily chew through the thinner plexiglass to get to the seed. (Squirrels, I thought this was a bird feeder.) Once the windows are in, it is time to form the cabin by connecting the four walls together. 
In order for the four walls to come together, the logs at the corner of each of those walls has to mesh with one another. (This is when you discover that instead of listening to the murder audio tape, you should have been paying more attention to making accurate cuts on the logs.) I discovered that treated wood has a tendency to twist a little as it dries out. This seemed to make some of the gaps on the corners vary in size making the meshing process a little difficult. (Nothing that a sledge hammer can't fix.) A little trim here and there and a little persuasion from a clamp or two (or six or eight) and the four walls came together to form a log cabin. Here again, the addition of glue was used to help bind all the pieces. Next we mounted the cabin on the base and fitted that slide inside the cabin so all the seed would slide to the front. 
From there we put on a hinged roof, built a little porch, put on some shutters and built a little roof cap over the hinge to shed any rain away and keep the seed inside dry. There were a lot of little angle cuts, but everything seemed to come together. As I stated earlier, this was the first time I used treated wood. It should hold up, but I will be curious to see what does happen over time. I used regular nails and screws. I have since been told that treated lumber will corrode those. That is where the glue will have to do it's job I guess. 
Well, there on the left is the finished project. It turned out nice. I will have to check up on this one in a couple years to see how it is holding up. I'm hoping it will last a while. I promised someone years back that I would make one of these for them, so I gave this one away. This aways seems to be a well-liked project. Look up there, I haven't even got it off the work bench and already a visitor showed up looking for something to eat. :)
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