WINDOW FLOWER BOX : PHASE 3

So now that I have made both the left and right sides of the flower box Phase 3 deals with the Front of the Box. This phase probably has the most work since its the most visual piece of the box. In some ways the front bares some similarities to the sides in that it is basically a frame and panel design but with a lot more panels.

I broke this phase down into the following steps:

• The parts

• Joinery of the Stiles and Rails

• Making the panel

• Additional Joinery

• Some Router Work

• Assembly

THE PARTS

There are quite a few parts to making the front and they are:

• Left & Right Stiles

• Top & Bottom Rails

• 10 Panels

  Below you can see the plans and the actual workpieces I needed to make the front.

JOINERY OF THE STILES & RAILS

CUTTING THE GROOVES

Just like I did in making the sides the front is basically the same, I needed to cut grooves on both rails and both stiles, the only difference in making the front is that the rails are a lot longer.

Although I am showing the rail in this image its because I need to cut a groove along the inside edges of the all parts. Basically a groove is cut on the center of the workpiece and is cut all the way along its edge.

The groove is 1/4” wide x 1/2” deep and centered on the workpiece thickness, although I thought the workpiece was 3/4” thick its evident here that its not but that was my problem to remedy and hopefully your stock is actually 3/4”.

To cut the groove I installed a 1/4” wide dado stack blade in my table saw and move the rip a 1/4” away from the blade.

The grooves are cut because I will be fitting the center panel inside this frame work .

CUTTING THE RAIL TENONS

My next piece of joinery to do only applied to the rails as this is how I closed the panel off, I needed to cut a 1/2” long tenon. In this image you can see that I have my rails in a horizontal position and is back up by my miter gauge and sacrificial board to back up the cut (this reduces tear-out).

In my table saw I widened the dado stack to 1/2”, and lowered the depth of cut to 1/4” and made 2 passes on each end of the board and it revealed the tenon. This tenon is housed in the grooves that we already cut into the edges of the stiles.

THE INSIDE PANELS

To complete the frame and panel front of course we need to make the panels as there are 10 of them in total, in the previous steps we created grooves on the inside edges of the rails and stiles, these were cut to house the center panel.

As you can see I have the panel laid flat on the table saw and in the saw I have a 3/8” wide dado stack raised a 1/4” high and a sacrificial board attached to the rip fence so I don’t damage my fence). Next I run all four edges on both faces of the panel to create a tongue, these tongues on all four sides of the panel get housed in the grooves.

Although there are a total of 10 panels that make up the front 9 of the 10 are the same but the last panel is different because there is no groove cut into the right side, instead it has a tongue so the difference from the other panels is that there is a centered tongue on all 4 sides of the panel so as that it can fit the stile on the far right hand side of the front assembly.

Here is an image of how the panels all fit together.

ADDITIONAL JOINERY

Since I needed a method of joining the side to the window box back and front I needed to create a joint so as that when it came to gluing up the box everywhere had a home. So I needed to cut some more grooves. In this image you can see the left stile on its face about to receive the groove that the back will connect into. Again this groove is positioned a 1/4” from the edge and is again a 1/4” wide x 1/2” deep.

ADDITIONAL JOINERY (Part 2)

You can see the connection pints that I needed to make to the front, As you can see I needed to cut an additional groove on the back side of right stile, this enabled the right side to be connected into the front assembly.

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SOME ROUTER WORK

Although this is an optional step and could of simply left the side panel all flat and no character to it with a basic frame and panel design and sometimes I quite like that look. This time I decided that I wanted to define edges of the inside panel and make it stand out some more. So I used my router installed with a “V Groove” router bit.

THE STILES

These parts are some what more demanding because I don’t want to route the entire edge of the part, I only wanted the parts that came in contact with the panel visually. This is called a stop routing ad there are a ton of articles online on how to complete it the task.

THE PANEL ROUTING

Routing the panel is easy enough as I just need to route the edges of the panel make sure your not routing the tongue as that will be hidden, add the router profile to what is left and will be exposed on the side. I just lowered the bit in the router table and just the right side of the bit is kissing the panel.

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ASSEMBLY

THE GLUE UP

The only part of the front assembly that was to receive glue was the tenons on the top and bottom rails, this is because I wanted the panels inside the frame to be able to move, as I already documented season humidity can shrink and expand wood so as to avoid the panel splitting it moves freely within the rails and the stiles.

CLAMPING THE PANEL

Here you can see the front panel all assembled and the glue applied to the tenon’s, I used a decent amount of clamps to keep everything aligned and in the end I will have a very decorative front panel .

Well that wraps up Phase 3. I now have both sides and the front completed, all that is left to do is to make the back and bottom framework and then it will all be ready for the assembly phase.

WINDOW FLOWER BOX : PHASE 2

Phase 2 of the project deals with the Left & Right Sides. Basically the sides are made from 5 parts and if your familiar with Frame & panel construction you can make them easily.

I broke this phase down into the following steps:

• The parts

• Joinery of the Stiles and Rails

• Making the panel

• Additional Joinery

• Some Router Work

• Assembly

THE PARTS

The side is made up with the following parts:

• Left & Right Stile (Vertical Pieces)

• Top & Bottom Rails (The Horizontal Pieces)

• 1 Panel (Basically the inside of the frame)

Here you can see the left side and its labeled parts, the right side has the same parts but the joinery positioning is a little different, but Ill get to the joinery a little later.

JOINERY

The stiles are the left and right vertical pieces of the side and these all need a groove cut into the edge of the boards thickness spanning the entire length of the part. Although I will cutting the same groove into these parts its crucial that you place the groove on the correct edge or the joinery will not come together to wrap the panel and house the rails.

CUTTING THE GROOVES

Although I am showing the stiles and rails in this image its because I need to cut a groove along the inside edges of the all parts. Basically a groove is cut on the center of the workpiece and is cut all the way along its edge.

The groove is 1/4” wide x 1/2” deep and centered on the workpiece thickness, although I thought the workpiece was 3/4” thick its evident here that its not but that was my problem to remedy and hopefully your stock is actually 3/4”.

To cut the groove I installed a 1/4” wide dado stack blade in my table saw and move the rip a 1/4” away from the blade.

The grooves are cut because I will be fitting the center panel inside this frame work .

CUTTING THE RAIL TENONS

My next piece of joinery to do only applied to the rails as this is how I closed the panel off, I needed to cut a 1/2” long tenon. In this image you can see that I have my rails in a horizontal position and is back up by my miter gauge and sacrificial board to back up the cut (this reduces tear-out).

In my table saw I widened the dado stack to 1/2”, and lowered the depth of cut to 1/4” and made 2 passes on each end of the board and it revealed the tenon. This tenon is housed in the grooves that we already cut into the edges of the stiles.

THE INSIDE PANEL

To complete the frame and panel side of course we need to make the panel, in the previous steps we created grooves on the inside edges of the rails and stiles, these were cut to house the center panel.

As you can see I have the panel laid flat on the table saw and in the saw I have a 3/8” wide dado stack raised a 1/4” high and a sacrificial board attached to the rip fence so I don’t damage my fence). Next I run all four edges on both faces of the panel to create a tongue, these tongues on all four sides of the panel get housed in the grooves.

Here you can see the profile of the panel, the top and underside of the panel is removed creating a tongue.

ADDITIONAL JOINERY (Part 1)

Since There are 4 sides to any box I needed a housing method to find homes at all 4 corners of the box, in this illustrated diagram you can see the left and right stiles (pink) and where I needed to locate the groove and tongue so as that I could complete the joinery of the back and front of the box

ADDITIONAL JOINERY (Part 2)

Since I needed a method of joining the side to the window box back and front I needed to create a joint so as that when it came to gluing up the box everywhere had a home. So I needed to cut some more grooves. In this image you can see the left stile on its face about to receive the groove that the back will connect into. Again this groove is positioned a 1/4” from the edge and is again a 1/4” wide x 1/2” deep.

ADDITIONAL JOINERY (Part 3)

I am most definitely jumping ahead using this image but you can see the connection pints that I needed to make to the sides, The left side stile shows a tongue and the right side stile shows the groove this is how I attached the front and back of the box to the left and right sides.

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Here is the completed side panel with the router groove all cut into the center of the assembly.

SOME ROUTER WORK

Although this is an optional step and could of simply left the side panel all flat and no character to it with a basic frame and panel design and sometimes I quite like that look. This time I decided that I wanted to define edges of the inside panel and make it stand out some more. So I used my router installed with a “V Groove” router bit.

THE PANEL ROUTING

Routing the panel is easy enough as I just need to route the edges of the panel make sure your not routing the tongue as that will be hidden, add the router profile to what is left and will be exposed on the side. I just lowered the bit in the router table and just the right side of the bit is kissing the panel.

THE STILES

These parts are some what more demanding because I don’t want to route the entire edge of the part, I only wanted the parts that came in contact with the panel visually. This is called a stop routing ad there are a ton of articles online on how to complete it the task.

Here is an image of the “V GROOVE” bit in the router.

Here you can see the subtle little groove cut on the right side edge, but boy does it make a difference.

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ASSEMBLING THE SIDES

Assembling the side was a pretty simple affair I basically applied glue to the tenons on the rails and installed them into the left and right stiles. This is the only glue that I applied to the entire side and there is a good reason. I wanted the inside panel to have freedom of movement because of seasonal humidity, these climate changes can break apart a project because wood expands and contracts within different seasons, and I needed the center panel to have that freedom to move within the frame work.

ORIENT THE PARTS

I usually do a dry assembly of the parts and rehearse the glue up, but this wasn’t really necessary as the glue up was small.

ALL CLAMPED UP

Here you can see both the left and right sides all glued and clamped up I left this to dry overnight.

That wraps up Phase 2 of the project and the sides came out ok I was happy enough with them but this cedar is proving difficult but I am satisfied with how they came out. Next up is assembling and making the front of the box, this phase most definitely has the most work to it but it has a lot of similarities to the sides as it is just a much bigger frame and panel.

WINDOW FLOWER BOX : PHASE 1

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.

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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.

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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.