As a woodworker for a long, long time, I have a pretty good idea how long it should take to make most woodworking projects, at least within a certain time frame. Occasionally I am completely and utterly wrong!! and this plant stand was one of those harsh realities.
I happen to grow Orchids and have for a long time, I don't have many and they don't always get the care they need and they let me know that by NOT producing flowers. Three 4 of my collection are letting me know that, so I decided to make a quick little plant stand for them that I could put beside patio doors with lots of light for them. That was my first miscalculation ...
I thought ... here's nice short video I could do in an afternoon. Nope, 3 jigs and 3 days later I discovered this was actually one of the most complicated builds I had ever done and the whole thing was completely enjoyable ... I got to use most of the tools I own and even got to try out some things I hadn't even thought about at the beginning of the build.
First up was to decide on a size, with a couple of scrap pieces of wood I determined a nice size for me was an outside 12" x 12" at the base and 12" x 6" at the top, with a height of 36" and 1" x 1" square.
After cutting my legs to length I laid one pair on my workbench expecting to simply glue and pin the crossmembers on, then I realized the sides were not even, and as I measured them of course the moved around ... it was at this point I figured out I would need to put all of these pieces in a stationary jig so they don't move around and I can make everything even and diagonal as it needs to be, so the next hour or so was spend making a jig from MDF and cutting up some 2x4s to hold the sizes.
Unfortunately I did not take a picture of any of the jigs, except what you can see in the video, so I ended up mocking up what the jigs looked like in the picture below ... you will at least get the idea of what they looked like.
You can still see the original pencil marks on the MDF, plus that upright with the spring clamp is what used to make the sides vertical, and of course the littlest jig for aligning the slats is seen in the middle, but again all of these are much better seen in the video.
After making the first side, I realized that for the second side to "match" the first so it would have to go in the jig upside down as it were, and you can see in the video that even though both sides were only off by about a 16th of an inch, when combined they are an 1/8th of an inch, not a lot but for something this size it would still make it a bit awkward to attchach the shelf slats.
After the 2 sides were completed and glue dried, I decided the best time to add the corner detail with the roundover router bit was BEFORE the final assembly. In the picture below you can see a close up of that detail.
Next for me was to start gluing and pinning the shelving slats to the cross members. Again I was a bit stumped as to how to make both sides both parallel and 90 degrees vertical from the floor. I couldn't find a good way to attach a square to one of the leg sides so ended up doing all this by making a square jig for the legs to sit in on my workbench, while making another jig on side that would hold one side at 90 degrees and work from there. I was bit difficult at first but once even just one slat was attached it really started to make the stand much more stable.
All I had to do next was to make sure the slats looked even across the tops and to space all of them with a little spacer stick.
If you look closely you will see that one slat is slightly thinner than the others. I made a couple of these in case I needed them, and I only needed one of them as it turns out.
About 3 days later, my "afternoon project" was complete. I struggled with how to finish this project and finally ended up using a lacquer spray on it, which worked fine and it was a great reminder of why I don't use this product very offen, it works fine but off-gasses for days with a less than pleasant odour ... but it's easy and complete.
If you are bored with your woodworking, this is one project I highly recommend, it was fun, challenging and delivered a useful piece of furniture / art, and I hope my Orchids appreciate all the work I go to for them ...
Copyright Colin Knecht
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