18 mortises, 24 rabbets, 16 grooves for paneling, 4 tongue-and-grooves, a lot of sawing, and we have ourselves a giant planter. Done by hand, it was a lot more work than it looks. It was good practice though, and a great workout for my bench. I mentioned this project a few months ago.

It turned out almost as I had planned, with a few minor modifications along the way. The joinery was a bit more complicated than expected.

At the junctures of all of the rails, there are stopped grooves that open to mortises from 2 directions. Since the legs are relatively thin, the tenons are trimmed at an angle to allow them to mate with the tenons sharing most of the mortise. Lots of geometry in these corners, and in something like chunky and irregular redwood there’s a major risk of blowing structure out. On more than one occasion I found myself right on the edge of peeling entire layers of this wood apart like an onion. I had to glue a chunk of one of my tenons back together when half of it peeled right off. Be careful with this stuff.

There are a few things I would do differently. First off, I’m glad that I went all-in with the hand-cutting of all of that joinery. It was good practice. I was in a weird headspace the whole time though. I chose fencing materials since I could get stock in sizes that were close to what I need. This material is cut to size, but warps and bows quite a bit. So while intending to do this precise joinery, that little voice kept saying: “It’s just fencing, and it’s just a planter, so I won’t bother planing this…” In the end my joinery was a bit less precise than I had wanted, partially because redwood compresses so much that even with a good fit, it won’t be a good fit for long if you’re not very careful.

My angles were slightly off due to slight warping in various pieces, but with slightly rounded edges on the fence stock, I couldn’t plane down much. I used the softness of the wood to my advantage and coaxed things into place when necessary. It all came together though, at about 4mm off square.

One thing that I was particularly cautious about was guarding against water pooling and wicking. For the tongue and groove joints I angled the shoulders of the tongues down slightly to encourage water to run out. I sealed the ends of the tenon shoulders with glue so they wouldn’t absorb so much water. Those shoulders are partially exposed to the elements due to rounding of the stock. I also applied some thinned glue as a sizing to the bottom of the feet, then a coat of full-strength glue over that while it was still wet. The intention here is to get some glue soaked into the fibers where the feet will be in constant contact with the ground.

This project also served as a testbed for some theories about building outdoor furniture. I’ll revisit this in a few years and see what’s still intact. I think having done it all with waterproof glue, mortise and tenons, floating panels, and liberal amounts of sealing should mean that this thing will be around longer than me.

Once the glue dries I’ll put mountains of soil into it and start planting things in my new mini herb farm. It’s Dogfish Head time.

Also, major carnage…