We’ve been in this house for around 11 years now I think, buying a year or so before we got married. I’m guessing the letterbox has been here for around 20 or 30 years, it has seen better days. I recently received a load of offcuts of spotted gum decking, one of my first thoughts was for a new letterbox. I figure the wood was being used to deck around a swimming pool, with a coat of protection it should surely stand up to a bit of rain and sun as a letterbox.
The design is my own, but isn’t anything too groundbreaking. I think it turned out quite attractive though. All I knew was that I wanted a curved roof on it, and pillowed finger joints. I just really, really like the look of box joints that extend past the box, I did them on a photo frame a little while back too. They are a lot of work to do, easy but time consuming, I think they are worth it.
The dome was fun too, first time doing one of those. I didn’t overthink it too much, which may cost me in a few years time if the wood splits along the glue joints. I clamped it up with lots of masking tape, and just made sure the span at the bottom was the same as the span at the top. Then I built the box to fit. The whole box is held together with glue, the only screws are to keep the numbers on the front and the hinge on the back.
My box joint jig made short work of cutting the joints out, it’s been a bit since I’ve used it so I was happy to get it out and blow the dust off, worked a charm too. I did notice though, that cutting hard wood is quite different to cutting mdf and ply, a lot more splinters and shards of wood go flying through the air, I made sure to wear a mask once I jerried on to that.
The original plan had an arc on each end of the dome to support it. Once I built the dome though, I decided against making those parts. It seemed like they would take up too much room and ruin the look. The dome also seems to be really strong and I felt it could do without them. Will have to wait and see if I live to regret that decision or not.
I finished it with 3 coats of a decking varnish, no stain in it, with a light sanding between each coat. I’ll leave it outside for a month and then sand it back a little and apply another coat. Then the intention is one coat a year, but we all know that that isn’t going to happen now don’t we?
I’m really happy with how it turned out, it’s almost a month old but I still find myself driving in and out of the driveway extra slowly, just making sure that it is all ok. 🙂
I may also have to get a gun licence…it took all of one day before a bird decided to paint a section of it itself, I was less than impressed…
So there you go, my first project of 2016 is a box jointed letterbox, what do you think?