With Summer around the corner I decided to make some new window boxes, I am using Cedar wood on the first box and see how I fair with it. To be honest the Cedar wood that I get from the bog box store isn’t usually that great, but I really love the look and smell of the wood.
I needed to make a total of 3 boxes with 36” & 24” widths I will be using plastic liners to put the actual plants into so I made my box dimensions according to that.
To be honest I could of made quick work of this project and basically screw 4 boards together and screw in a base and call it a day, but in keeping with my fine woodworking endeavors I chose a more elaborate design.
WINDOW BOX FEATURES
Frame and Panel design
Tongue & Groove Joinery
Top Trim to cover all the exposed joinery edges.
Rail, Stile & Panel construction techniques.
As I usually do I will be breaking this project down in the following parts:
Research & Design
Materials Needed : 36” & 24” Sizes
PHASE 1: First Things First : Ripping & Crosscutting
PHASE 2: The Sides
PHASE 3: The Front
PHASE 4: The Back
PHASE 5: The Base
PHASE 6: All Finished
RESEARCH & DESIGN
Although I did quite a lot of research online I could not find exactly what I wanted in 1 project so anytime that happens I design the project on Sketchup and tweak certain things to make it my own. The window boxes do contain certain characteristics of some project that I found online but all in all this is my design. I was originally going to use sliding dovetails as the primary joinery method but after purchasing the cedar I decided against it as the cedar was not exactly 3/4” and I wanted to use a 1/2” dovetail bit. The cedar was 1/8” narrow than 3/4” and it was quite brittle so I decided to go with tongue & groove joinery.
Below you can see my Cover page Images, I did make a very detailed set of plans to help make this project and these are what the window box will look like. This blog details me making the 36” Cedar Window Box. The 24” wide window box will not be made using Cedar, Ill explain later. But both boxes will be made using the same joinery and woodworking techniques.
MATERIALS NEEDED
So like I said I will be making 2 sizes of window box and here is what you need to make either size.
36” WINDOW BOX
12 FEET OF CEDAR
8 FEET OF PRESSURE TREATED LUMBER
TITEBOND III GLUE (or any waterproof glue)
1 5/8” Stainless steel screws
24” WINDOW BOX
16 FEET PRESSURE TREATED WOOD (Didn’t use Cedar)
TITEBOND III GLUE (or any waterproof glue)
1 5/8” Stainless steel screws
Here a the materials that I needed to make the window box.
Here is the wood glue and steel screws, I wont need that many screws maybe 10 or so.
FIRST THINGS FIRST : RIPPING & CROSSCUTTING
The way that I designed the window box looks awesome but it has one downside there are so many pieces to rip and crosscut. I even set up my cultist into so many sections I had to number my boards so Icut the correct components of the correct boards, but once I got going I made quick work of this. I think when I was done I had almost 40 parts to the project.
RIPPING
I made sure to keep all my board widths the same and that was a 1-1/2” wide so I followed my cut list ripped all the boards into easier to manage strips. In this image you can see my tablesaw set up to cut 1-1/2” cuts. For those of you that are not aware with some of the terminology, Rip cuts are long cuts made with the grain, and crosscuts are those cut across the grain.
RIPPING (PART 2)
Here you can see the cedar sections ripped to 1-1/2” wide there are some wider cuts to make but they are for the back and bottom of the box and a few other components. If you use my plans to make this box all these are laid out for you. To make sure that I knew what board went with what cut list diagram I placed my actual plans on the appropriate boards, so when it came to crosscutting them to final size I had a guide to help me.
CROSSCUTTING
I am lucky enough to have a dedicated miter saw station that really comes in handy when I have a ton of repeat cuts, here you can see my miter saw with a stop block set to the desired length that way I just place my stock against the stop block and cut to hearts content, there were a few different lengths that I needed so I just cut all boards that were the same size and then adjusted the stop block for the next size on the list, this way you can guarantee the pieces are of uniform length.
ALL CEDAR PARTS ARE DIMENSIONED
Here you can see all the cedar parts to their final dimensions and again you can see my cut list plans under some of the parts so as that I know what each part is for. I did still need to work on the pressure treated wood but I decided until the window box frame was finished before I cut that up.
CHANGE UP; NOTIFICATION
Well Phase 1 is all wrapped up and I well on the way of making some pretty stunning window boxes. Before I go further with this blog, I just wanted to let you know why I chose not to use cedar on the smaller boxes and that was because it was a nightmare to work with, the cedar was under dimensioned it was supposed to be 3/4” thick but realized it was 5/8” thick and played havoc with my joinery dimensions, this resulted in some joints far too loose and some too tight because I usually deal in thirds when tongue and grooving, this under dimensioned stock resulted in some pieces cracking as the wood was extremely light and had little robustness to it. So although I completed the window box and it looks great, it should have gone a lot easier and a lot less hair would have been pulled out. So if you choose to make the window box out of cedar make sure that it is at the least 3/4” thick, thicker would be better. But there you go.