With my limited funds, I love the idea of pallet wood projects especially when they are available from where I work for free! That said I did need to buy some 38×38 square CLS to make the legs. If I had a bandsaw or table saw for ripping I’d have made them myself from pallet wood so buying them feels a bit like cheating but hey-ho!
I started out by using my mitre saw to cut down the pallet wood to a manageable size and also cutting the legs to a sensible size.
The pallet wood would form side slats and so I made sure they stacked up to 4 equal heights when stacked next to each other.
These were then sanded with the orbital sander.
I then routed two 12mm slots in each leg on adjacent sides. I used a piece of wood clamped down to my makeshift mitre saw table to get a straight cut all the way down the leg and this was a bit tricky so not all cuts were as nice as I’d have liked.
In hindsight I would have done this before cutting the legs to length as I needed to set up the router each time which took time.
In the future I would hopefully just be able to use a router table once my workshop was set up.
The slats were glued with Titebond III so to make sure it was strong and waterproof and clamped overnight. I really missed having a workbench available though and with a limited amount of clamps this was really problematic. The saying “you can never have enough clamps” is very true!
I sealed the whole planet when done with cheap deck sealer and then added two coats of creosote to the outside as this was all I had available. I like the dark colour but the wife would have preferred the raw wood look.
Finally once dry, I planted the prettiest flower I have…
*Update!*
3 years later and the planters still look good in a different garden! 🙂
