FLOWER BOX OF WHITE OAK

I've made several flower boxes for my son's gravesite over the past 22 years. I keep improving on them, each time I make a new one. I have high hopes that this one should last a very long time.

This is made with some branches of a white oak tree that I cut about 10 years ago. None of the logs were long enough for the length of the flower box, so I made the grain direction from front to back with short pieces.

After gluing the lengths together, I ran them through the planer.

I wanted to have some slope to the base of the box, so that the water would flow to the back of the box. So I tipped the base, and then ran the router sled over it, to shave 1/4" off, on the back side.

I used dowels to join the base to the sides and the ends. I drilled all the dowels in at different angles.

I wanted to stick with the same white oak for the dowels, so I made my own dowels at the router table.

Because I had to have the middle and end panels, have the same grain directions as the base, that means that the grain direction won't match with the front and back panels.

The expansion rate of the middle and end panels will be different than that of the front and back panels. So I made loose dovetail joints for these. My hope is that as the wood expands up on the end panels, that it won't affect the front and back panels, which won't be expanding up.