Reply To: large cedar planter box
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The planter box is done! Well, I still need to make a thing to go around the top edge, but the thing is assembled, finished, lined, filled with soil, and has strawberries planted. It took a lot of fussing to finish up the joinery, drill draw-bore holes, and get everything else ready for final assembly outside.
I didn’t have enough free space to do the full test fit in my basement, but then I realized it would fit around my bench. The picture of that also shows the pieces for the top trim thing just lying in place to get a visual preview. I think I’ll do mitered bridle joints for that.
The picture of it half assembled shows a better view of how I did the bottom. It’s five pieces of cedar fencing laid across three 4×4 timbers, I guess one could call them sleepers. I pegged them in place so they wouldn’t wiggle about and left gaps for drainage/air circulation. I rabbeted the ends of the slats so they fit into 1/2″ channels I routed into the inside faces of either end of the bed. I also made cutouts in the side walls for them to rest on the sleepers. This may seem overly complicated, but it means the main structure of the bed is not touching the ground at all but is still well supported. I live in the rainy PNW, so I wanted to make sure it won’t just hold water and rot in the winter.
Anyway, assembly went fairly smoothly, and tapping the pegs home was pretty damn satisfying. I put a coat of BLO on the inside of the walls. That done, we stapled weed barrier cloth to the inside to prevent direct soil/wood contact and filled it up. I coated the outside with “red cedar” colored Penofin, which we already had for protecting fence posts from the elements. It’s a bit redder than I’d like, but it worked pretty well on our fence posts so it should do nicely here.