How to Make a Planter Box

We're building a planter for outside, but we want to treat it like a piece of furniture. One of the things that means is be sure on this dimension of lumber, you start by squaring an end. That way we're gonna have a good square end to work with as we start to put stuff together. First thing I'm working on are my frame pieces. Check your cut list for the dimensions. What'll happen here is that every single piece I cut will produce two frame pieces, 'cause using the one by four material, we're gonna rip those out of this width later. Want to make sure they all come out identical in length. The best way to make that happen is to use a stop block. Second verse same as the first. I'm gonna keep on cutting until I have enough of these pieces in order to make all my narrow frame parts. There's a system to these things, and the system on these planter boxes is that up here at the top we have a frame. There's another one just like it at the bottom. Once the frames are done, we side it, sort of like siding a house, by putting these vertical pieces of cedar on the outside. At this stage of the game, from the pieces that we just produced, we're ready to put this frame together. So the dealio there was, cut them to length, take them to the table saw, rip them to width. Now we're ready to put them together. The way they go together I refer to as each piece chasing the other, meaning that they're all the same length. So, number one butts into number two, then number two butts into number three, number three butts in number four, that returns and butts back into the first one. That gives us a square when we're done. Easiest way to make this happen is to start here at a vice. And when I put this material into the vice, I'm gonna put it in so it's even with the top of this two by six, that way that's gonna become something my material can rest on when I'm bringing them together like this. So, I don't have so many parts to hold onto here. We're using 1-1/4 inch screws to put these together, along with our waterproof glue. On my cedar pieces, like I mentioned earlier, they're rough one face. If that's the way yours look, you might want to do this the same way, which is put the rough face toward the inside. The reason I'm doing that is that a few steps down the road, when we put our vertical pieces on the outside, I wanna be able to glue this smooth back of the vertical to the smooth face of this frame piece. If I have the rough sawn out, I won't have a good glue bond there. Make sure you pre-drill. It's easy to trick yourself into thinking that with the soft wood and these small screws we don't have to pre-drill, but you'll split the heck out of the cedar if you don't. And a single screw is all we need. Now, when we go this way, I've got this piece of cedar cut to this length. So now it can go down here. And it's just a very simple way to get a helping hand as you put these parts together so that you don't have so much stuff to hold onto. This'll take care of our first frame. We need two frames, exactly like this, two frames identical for the top and the bottom of every one of the planter boxes that you're gonna make. That one's all done. There is a distinct method to the madness when we start to put the verticals onto the frames. You have to do it in the right sequence of events. So let's, first, look at this one that is in progress. On one side of the planter, you've got a narrow, a narrow, and a wide. On the other side of the planter, you've got narrow, narrow, narrow. These boards are all one by fours in their natural state, meaning that I didn't rip these to a specified thickness. This is the way they came from the lumberyard. On the other side, what we got here, is a one by four and a one by four, a one by eight that was custom ripped to make up the space in the middle. What we're going for is exactly the same spaces here as we have here. So what we need to do is build this thing up in a sequence that lets us determine what this spacing will be so we can apply that information to this side and make this spacing the same, and cut this one just perfect to fit. Here's how we're gonna do that. Big picture, what's gonna happen is that we're gonna take our frames. And we're gonna fasten them like so to the verticals using 1-1/4 inch screws, go with that shorter screw so you don't fasten this to your bench top. We're gonna start by using screws. In just a little bit I'm gonna show you an alternative method. Pretty straightforward stuff here. We're gonna glue it, and we're gonna screw it, with two screws in the back of each of these verticals, carefully aligning the bottom and the sides. Now, we're treating this like a piece of furniture. What does that mean? It means we gotta have good uniformity of dimensions. That means when you cut your verticals, be sure that you're using a stop block on the miter saw to get all of those parts exactly the same. What's nice about this approach is, when we're done, these big screws don't show on the outside of your project. The frames are the same size in both directions 'cause of the way that we put them together. However, just being slightly, maybe a little bit OCD, I like to have, if the end grain is up on this piece I have the end grain up on this piece, 'cause this frame could go in like this or it could go in like this. So just for complete uniformity, I'm gonna make sure the frames are facing in the same direction. It should be the same either way, but it's just a little insurance step to make sure that everything comes out right. When we do this side, it's quite possible that like I have to here, you've gotta pull these parts a little bit, you gotta manipulate them to get them in alignment. We're not doing the middle, don't do that yet. We have to do this exact same operation on the other side, completely identical to the work you've just done. Now, to keep our process moving forward, next thing we do is go this way. Starting with the two outside pieces, and in this case, what we're gonna do is make them flush with the bottom, which should be easy because our overall length is already established, and flush with the face of the piece we've already installed. So, I'm checking flush-icity across the bottom, alignment out here. A couple of screws. Whoops, gotta drill the hole before you drive. It's kinda like playing that old game Operation. I'm trying to get in here and not bump the frame and make the buzzer go off. Now, gonna do the thing to this face. But we can come back to that. With this face done we can talk about math. Here's what's gotta happen. Vertical, vertical, with each of these spaces being identical. Here's the easiest way to do that. Slide them all on one side. Take a measurement. Whatever measurement you get divide by three, 'cause we've got space, space, space. That result is the size of the spacer that we need to make in order to get these equally spaced. Once we have the spacer, I'll show you how to use it on the other side to calculate that centerpiece. So let me get my spacers cut, and then we'll come back and we'll have a look at putting the middle piece in over here. I've cut my spacers. So, let's just do a little double-check. Gonna end up like this and like this and thusly, with this amount of space then left in between the two. Now, what do we do with that on the other side? We go like this. And what we need is spacer, spacer, space. So an easy way to do that is like this. And then take a measurement. This distance is the width to which we need to cut this piece so that we can use a spacer on each side and keep the spacing consistent here, as we have on the other side. One of the things I told you earlier is that I'm gonna give you a faster way to put this together, and I'll show you that now. And that is a crown stapler. We need a stapler that's capable of shooting long enough fasteners that we can use it for this material. The general rule, you want a fastener that's about twice as long as what you're going through. So if we have a 3/4 inch rail, in this case I'd use an inch and a quarter staple. In my rough sawn material, it's 7/8 thick, not 3/8, so I've got an inch and a quarter staple in here. What we gain is just a kind of a crazy amount of speed. Let's get this center guy in there and you'll see that happen. I wouldn't do this with a brad nailer. I would do it with a crown stapler. The difference is that brads have such tiny, tiny, tiny tiny heads on them, that they're not gonna have enough bite into the cedar to really hold things together. Where with the stapler or the staple, kind of like the head of a screw, it's got a big enough crown to it that it's effective. Now, my preference when I use this, is for the crown to go across the grain rather than with the grain. That helps it have a little better bite. A little faster than driving screws. So it's not a must have, but I'll tell you what, I use a stapler pretty darn often in my shop. And it might be something you want to consider adding to yours. Now we can finish our other side. Now, my angle's gonna get a little funky in here. But I think, there we go. All right, same thing to that last side. That takes care of getting the verticals on our planter. Next thing to do is put the bottom in the planter. And this is really straight forward. I've got these cut so that they're a little shorter than the distance from inside to inside in the planter down, and they're gonna get glued and stapled or screwed to the frame, the top of the frame, around the bottom here. Simple stuff. One on the outside on this side. Because the frame is square, it doesn't matter which direction you run them. In my case, I'm running them into the side that's got the larger piece in the middle. But like I said, it really doesn't matter which way you do it. The last one goes in the middle. And I am simply gonna center that by eye. It's such a non-critical component. Trust your eye on this. You're gonna get it plenty close enough to hold up the pot that's gonna sit in the middle of this thing. All right. What we end up with are, three of our one by fours spanning the bottom. Ample space in there so that moisture can run out if you happen to over-water your plants. Next thing we can do is add feet to the planter. Let me show you where we're going with that. All these are are chunks of two by four that have been cut so that we can fasten them onto the corners of the frame. For this, we're gonna go back to screws 'cause my staples aren't long enough to reach through the two by four and into the frame. And it's inset, this is flush with the outside of the frame, not with the outside of the material. Now, the reason I just changed my mind there is because, working on these prototype planners I learned, when our feet have a little bit of a crown in them, this works better if you put the crown so that it's pointing up like this, rather than like this. So initially I put it into the glue bed upside down. Get that excess off of there, flip it over, and go again. Now right there, hit another screw, I'm gonna come out an angle just a little bit. That won't let me get past it. So I'm gonna move... It's like drilling for oil here. There we go. And then, when this is all done, I'm gonna putty that hole over so that I'm not leaving a exposed spot sitting on the ground like that where a lot of moisture could wick up inside. Okay, 2-1/4 inch screws are gonna work just fine on those feet. Three more feet to go, and that'll take care of the bottom and the footwork. We're gonna do a couple of things to dress up the outside of the planter. We're gonna get a piece of trim on the top. We're gonna get another piece of trim going this way to cover the seam between these two pieces, in case those didn't close up as well as they could have. That's quite possible here, especially when you're dealing with the rough sawn cedar. Sometimes it's just not quite dimensionally perfect, so it's hard to get that to be a perfect seam. Here's what we need to do across the top. What I found, especially if you're working with the rough sawn stuff, is that, if I just measure across here and put a piece on, when I put the pieces the other way, the corners don't quite close, because of irregularities in this face. So here's a better way to make this happen. Cut your trim oversize. Lay it on there. Put a piece this way and butt it to it. That way we know we've got it positioned the right distance in that direction. Then, clamp that. And double-check that it still looks good for positioning. Then, come over here and put a piece this way. And mark this one. So we're using this piece now like a straight edge to determine exactly where this one should be cut. I've already done that to a couple of pieces. There's one of them. Now, realistically, with this rough sawn surface, are we gonna get a lot of action from the glue here? Probably not. But, what does glue cost? It's not expensive. So, I'm gonna go ahead and put some glue in there as an insurance policy to just help make sure that everything is nice and solid. Now, when this goes on, bring your straight edge device back. That'll control your position left and right, flush with the top of the planter. Flush with the top of the planter. Rinse and repeat. Now, pieces going the other way? Same idea. Lay that on there. Flush with one side. Mark the other. Cut that to length. It's probably gonna be side specific, so I'm gonna call that A and A. B and B. Cut these to length, then I'll come back and put those on. And we'll also talk about the vertical trims that are gonna close up those corners. Let me take off and cut these guys to size. Boy, you gotta love a stapler. That takes care of the cap trim. Now, on these sides, another piece that's been ripped to inch and a half wide. All it's gotta do is lay on there like that and that'll mask that seam. Cut to length to match the distance from the bottom of this to the end of this. And flush with the outside corner. Three more of those. And that takes care of trimming out our planters. Getting ready to make the tops for your planters. First step is, grab that five quarter stock that we're gonna use for the taps and rip it down to three and a half inches. Next thing we want to do is miter the corners. Now if miters frighten you, I'm gonna show you an alternative method for making the tops that doesn't include any miters. But if you do want to miter, here's the dealio. First thing to do is set your saw at 45, and bring some scrap to the saw and do a test cut. What I want to know from the test cut is when I put these two pieces together and I slide a square into the inside corner, are they making 90 degrees? And if they're not, if my square doesn't nest in there, then I'm gonna need to work on these angles until it does. Once we've got that right, next thing is you can bring two of the four pieces to the miter saw and cut one end. Now, when we do a miter, when we do any kind of a frame, a couple of things can go kerflooey here and make the miters not close effectively. One is, the angle on the saws is not right. We just address that. The other is, we don't have uniformity of sizes. We really have to make sure that each piece that's opposite each other is identical in length. Now, in the perfect world, if I had enough capacity on the saw, I could bring all four pieces here and cross cut them all at the same time, 'cause we are making a perfect square, not a rectangle. But not every miter saw has got that much capacity. So instead, I'm gonna do two at a time. I've already got my length marked out on here. But what we need to make sure of, then, is that these two stay together when we start putting the frame together. So, before I do any cutting, here on the end, I'm gonna mark these with one slash. And then... Two, three, four. That way, when I put these together into the frame, as long as these two pieces are opposite each other, 'cause they were cut together, my frame should come together okay. Key to making this work is to line up those miters that are already taken care of on this end, cut to the line on this end. As far as the length goes, inside to inside here on our miters, I've added a half inch to the inside to inside dimension on the planter, so there's gonna be a quarter inch reveal, a quarter inch step from the edge of this to that inside edge on the planter. That takes care of mitering these now. Make sure that you cut enough pieces for as many planter boxes as you're making. Next step, we want to get some reinforcement in these so that when they sit outside year after year after year, we're certain that the miters are gonna stay together. The step I'm taking to make sure these miters stay closed is to add a biscuit to every one of the corners. And now we can assemble. So, I've cut this for number 10 biscuits, locating them here off the corner of the miter. Now, when we put this together, let me get this in the bench first, so I don't make a big gluey mess. And then I'm gonna put some blocks on here to get the frame up off the paper, so I don't glue my frame to the paper. Then what we have to do is look for our marks. So there's a two and a two. That tells me they need to go opposite each other. The X's tell me that that's the side that was up when I did the biscuit joinery. There's a one and a one, opposite, opposite. If you don't have a biscuit joiner, here's what you could do. You could of course put dowels in here, any other form of loose tenon. You could also glue the frame together with just the miters, and then after it's assembled, drive a screw through the edge of one piece into the other piece. And that'll also help reinforce that joint. The problem with miters is just it's end grain to end grain and we don't get a lot of glue strength out of that because of the end grain. Now, corner to corner. And to close this up, boy, I really like web clamps, band clamps for this. And if you don't have an official woodworking band clamp, cargo straps work okay. All right. The band clamp will kind of help hold everything. Then, it's often helpful if we add a clamp this way. And a little bit of tension. I don't want to push that piece right out. All right, so what I was just looking at, the reason I adjusted my clamps was, this inside corner was pushed too far that way. So I loosened this clamp, drew this one down, that pulled it back in. Then a little more tension on this one. So like I said, the band clamps do a nice job of just kind of holding everything so that you're not fighting too many pieces all at once. I'm gonna get one more going this way. Same thing, I'm looking at this inside corner, and I can see that this piece has climbed past that piece. There, she's creeping back down. All right, so get the clamps on it. Manipulate them until you get all your corners closed up. That is looking nice. Then we'll let that glue dry. Now, while that glue is drying, let me set this big structure aside and show you an alternative to mitering. We can, on the frame, set this up so that the pieces, I call it, chase each other. Here's what we've got. Same material, five quarter decking, cut such that, this part butts into the edge of this one. This one, then, butts into the edge of this one. And so on. And so on. Same deal, when this is cut to size, what I'm going after, what I'm looking for, is for a quarter inch reveal, all the way around, a quarter inch step from the edge of the frame to the inside of the planter. You've gotta get biscuits in here or some other form of reinforcement, because just end grain to long grain is not gonna hold those pieces together. But, this doesn't look bad. And it's a nice alternative if you don't want to mess around with mitering the parts, you don't want to mess around with making that kind of a frame. Chasing the pieces like this is another way to do this. Once the glue is dry, we'll be ready to fasten the top down to the top of the planter. Glue is dry, top's looking good. We're ready to glue and nail that on. We're gonna use nails for this, 'cause I think they look better in the top than having those screw heads show. So we'll get glue all the way around the rim. And the key when we put this top on will be to get a uniform reveal on all four edges. I'll show you a good trick for that. Right in the bed of glue. The trick comes in a combination square. Of course this is adjustable. What I did is, put it on this side. Tested its position, the position being face of this frame piece to edge of frame. Then let's have a look at this side, and that should still be touching. Adjust this until that's the same for both sides. Same thing going this way. And it should be the same in both directions. And this way. I'm gonna start right here, in this corner. What we want to do is stay far enough back from the edge of the cedar that we're not gonna cause it to split. If you have any anxiety about that, there's nothing wrong with pre-drilling these top boards to make sure it doesn't split. Whoops, one got away. Now, because I tapped on there, I want to check my position again. If you're nervous about your hammer use, or maybe you're having a kid help you build this, and their hammer use is like lightning, it never hits twice in the same place. So you want to, last thing we want at this point is a big hammer kiss in the face of our material. Take a piece of scrap, put a notch in it so that you can surround the nail like that. And before we get too far, let's do a final. That looks good. Now, don't nail that piece down, you'll never get it out. And then from this point, use a nail set to finish that, so we don't dimple that face. Now, it's possible it might rack, there, it did just a little bit. In other words, in order to get that uniform spacing, I'm twisting the base, I'm pushing the base a little bit, to get the reveal the same. Eight nails, one in each corner. I'll grab a punch and I'll set those nails. Then, a little bit of hand sanding on this to knock off any sharp corners. And that takes care of assembling our planter bases. That takes care of our building of these modular planters. It's a really nice project. Great addition to any backyard.