Two-Tool Project: Build a Cedar Planter

Whether you call this a cedar sleeve or a planter is up to you (maybe it’s a planter sleeve) Its purpose is to disguise weather-beaten flower pots. I call it a sleeve because, unlike a planter, it holds no soil. I can swap flower pots in and out of it easily to suit the season or for maintaining the plant. All it takes is adding some form of a bottom to make it a planter.

Also, unlike a planter, this project is quite small and simple. Wood is expensive. A full-on cedar planter can easily set you back a couple hundred dollars in lumber. The lumber for this costs $25. It’s a small Saturday afternoon project that any handy person can build with a circular saw and a cordless drill. And to ensure the constructibility of this idea, we built a series of these, each one using slightly different methods. What you see here is where we ended up.

Buy one piece of lumber, make two rip cuts and some crosscuts, and assemble these pieces. Then cut, glue, and attach the mitered edge band. There you are. Boom. Done. You’ve got yourself a nice little planter sleeve.

Cut Efficiently

The western red cedar plank used in this project is 1 inch thick by 5-1/2 inches wide. Yet the product is sold as 5/4 x 6 inches. Note: "5/4" is lumberyard and sawmill nomenclature where lumber is measured in 1/4-inch increments, thus a 5/4 board is 1-1/4 inches thick. It starts out at that thickness but, by the time all its processing is complete, it’s thinner and narrower than where it started. This appearance-grade cedar has nicely rounded edges that you can use to good effect in making the planter sleeve’s rim.

Begin by crosscutting the 8-foot cedar plank into two 4-foot sections. Use a small cordless circular saw and an appropriate blade for making fine cuts with a minimum of tear out, such as a 40-tooth or even 60-tooth.

Begin the project by cutting the 8-foot piece of cedar in half. Guide the saw using a square. Run the saw all the way through the cut and let the off-cut piece fall freely to the work surface. Note the use of a T block support to elevate the workpiece and prevent the saw blade from cutting into the surface. There’s more to say about T blocks. See the discussion of them at the end of the article.

Next, use a rip fence, or build your own simply (as we describe below), to rip one 2-inch-wide piece off of each of these 4-foot sections.

Lacking a fence for the DeWalt was no big deal for us and it shouldn’t be for you, either. We used a scrap panel and a long thin off-cut from a previous project. We fastened the two together, forming a sort of ripping sled and held it to the saw with three globs of hot-melt glue. We clamped the cedar plank to the work surface and just slid the saw along making a nice neat ripped piece of lumber, exactly two inches wide. We discuss this down-and-dirty rip guide at the end of the article.

From the remaining stock, crosscut two pieces 14 inches long. Then crosscut another two pieces 5-1/2 inches long. These crosscut dimensions are to suit the two small rose bushes in pots shown here. These pots are 4-1/2 inches tall and have a slightly larger diameter at their top. The inside cavity of the sleeve is large enough to accommodate the pots and the plants’ top growth.

You can see in the photos that the cedar is elevated above the work surface on supports known as T blocks. These blocks prevent the saw from cutting into the work surface, and the cutoff pieces don’t fall all the way to the floor, they drop a couple of inches to a wood surface without damage. You can hold the lumber in place or clamp it. And if you cut into the T block in any of these operations, no harm is done. The blocks are sacrificial. We discuss more about them at the end of this article.

Guide the saw in making all crosscuts using a combination square or a triangular rafter square. Both work equally well.

Crosscut to form the front, back and two ends of the sleeve. Support the saw safely above the work surface and guide the saw with a square–in this case a combination square with a sliding blade. Position your hand well away from the saw blade, pulling the square tight to the workpiece. Check that the saw’s shoe is aligned with the square then simply push the saw through the cut. The method is safe and highly accurate.

Take the long side that you just cut and use it to mark the length of the piece that will become the sleeve’s opposite side. Butt the two pieces of wood together and use the square to check that the pieces are aligned. Once they are, mark the next cut by running a pen or sharp pencil along the end of the top piece of wood. If you align the saw carefully with that line, you will produce a second piece that is the same length as the one used to mark its length.

After the front and back pieces are cut, use the same procedure to cut the ends. That is, make one end cut, then use that piece to mark the opposite end, and cut that piece supporting it on the T blocks while guiding the saw with a square.

Fastening

Clamp a side and two ends to the work surface and make a pair of counterbored pilot holes through the sides and into the ends. Drive the screws to fasten the parts together. Repeat this step for the opposite side. You only need a handful of screws for this project. Any reasonably-sized screw rated for outdoor use will work. I used bugle head 2-inch long Number 8 stainless steel screws left over from another project.

Clamp the front piece to the work surface and two ends. Check that the ends are square to the front piece.

Use a combination square to achieve consistent screw spacing. Shorten the square’s blade to equal the screw’s distance spaced in from the edge. And since the square’s blade is exactly 1 inch wide, positioning the drill bit in the center of the square’s blade positions the center of the screw hole exactly 1/2 inch in from the wood’s edge. Thus, the pilot hole will be bored centered in the end and up one inch. It’s an old timey sort of a trick that works as well today as it did when combination squares were invented more than a century ago.

With the square removed, the counter-bore bit is accurately positioned. Drill the hole through the front and into the end grain of the side piece. It’s likely that the drill bit will become packed with end-grain wood fiber, so clean the bit off before drilling the next hole.

With the pilot hole bored, drive a screw to lock the two adjacent pieces together. Here we use a bugle head coarse-thread screw specifically designed for being driven into soft lumber. The screw is stainless steel, so it is weather resistant. Use any form of screw that is similar, so long as it either stainless steel, hot-dipped galvanized, or has some other coating to help the fastener resist corrosion. Fasteners designed for building decks work particularly well.

Mitered Edge Band

A mitered edge band is nice, but cutting it with a small circular saw requires some patience and a steady hand. If you’re up for the challenge, begin by cutting a 45-degree miter on the end of one of the ripped edge band pieces. Guide the saw along a triangular rafter square or the combination square that you used in crosscutting.

Clamp a piece of edge band securely to the work surface and make the first miter cut. Hold the square firmly to the workpiece. Your hand should be nowhere near the saw blade as you guide the saw through the cut. Let the off cut fall free to the floor.

Next, hold a wood block in the corner of the sleeve and line up the miter on the edge band with the block’s corner.

The first miter forms a reference surface. To ensure that you are starting off as accurately as possible, hold the miter at the corner of the sleeve, and use a smooth and straight block with a sharp, square edge to check the alignment of the miter with the corner. Carefully align the block’s corner with the face of the miter.

Now take the block and place it in the opposite corner. Run a sharp pencil up the corner of the block and onto the edge band to mark the location of the second miter.

Repeat the marking procedure at the second miter. While holding the edge band and the marking block firmly in place, run a sharp pencil along the corner of the marking block to the corner of the edge band. This precisely marks the position of the miter on the edge band.

Repeat this mark-cut- procedure for each part of the edge band.

The planter requires eight accurately marked miter cuts. After the first miter is used as a reference, each subsequent miter is aligned with the sleeve corner using a block, then marked. Then each cut is guided by the square. The process is slow and methodical.

Move on to assembling the edge band.

First, tape a piece of wax paper to the work surface and use water-resistant glue and tape to hold the mitered edge band pieces together.

Apply glue to the face of the miter and position the parts on the wax paper. Use blue painter’s masking tape to provide clamping pressure and to hold the edge band pieces in place. Wipe off any glue that squeezes out of the joint and let the glue set for at least a couple of hours before removing the tape.

When the glue has set, remove the edge band and prepare it for fastening to the sleeve by marking the center of each long side and each short side.

Install the counterbore bit in the drill again and use the combination square to help place the bit so that the pilot hole will go right through the center of the side below the edge band.

Hold the edge band firmly to the sleeve and drill the pilot hole through the edge band and into the edge of the sleeve below.

Drive one screw in the center of each side and end of the edge band. Sink each screw so the head is approximately 1/4 inch below the surface. With a 2-inch screw, that means 1-1/4 inch of fastener is being driven into the surface below–more than enough holding power for a non-structural application like this.

Knowing that the sleeve will be exposed to many wet-dry cycles, I also drove a screw through each miter to help keep the corners tight.

Hold the counterbore bit so it will drill at a 90-degree angle to the face of the miter. Drill through the edge band and into the miter face and stop when the bit’s counterbore cutter is about 1/4 inch deep into the lumber.

Drive the screw into the pilot hole and stop when the screw’s head is about 1/4 inch below the surface of the wood. The coarse-thread wood screws used in this project provide maximum grip through side and face grain, and into end grain. Avoid using fine-thread wood screws designed for hardwood, and you’ll be assured of a box that stays together.

This completes the sleeve. Although this project is a two-tool project in the sense that you can build it with nothing more than a circular saw and a cordless drill, you can complete it by running over all its outside surfaces with sandpaper.

Down-and-Dirty Rip Guide

If your saw lacks a rip guide, grab some scrap pieces of wood laying around from your last project for a makeshift version of this accessory. I made the one you see here from junk wood I had laying around–stuff that was one step away from the trash can. If you assemble these materials in the right way, it produces a guide that rips with the accuracy you’d get from an inexpensive table saw.

The bottom panel guide is 9 inches wide x 24 inches long. It’s made from 1/4-inch MDF. The fence is 1/2 inch plywood, about 3/4-inch wide and 30 inches long. I connected the panel and the fence with 3/4-inch screws. Begin by aligning the saw’s shoe with the edge of the base panel, and make a plunge cut through the panel at full blade depth. Withdraw the saw; position the fence parallel to the cut made by the saw blade and two inches away from it. Next, clamp the fence in place. Turn the panel over and drive screws through the panel and into the fence to fasten the two together.

If your saw didn’t come with a fence, or it got lost or damaged, you can still make dead-on accurate rip cuts with an improvised fence. This is more accurately described as a sled with a fixed fence position. Both the top panel and the fence are made from scrap wood.

The fence is longer than the panel and is attached to it with two small screws. The fence’s length helps you to more easily position the saw for a rip cut. For accurate rip cuts, attach the fence so its inside edge is the required distance from the inside edge of the saw kerf in the panel. In this case, the required dimension is two inches.

Here’s a neat trick, secure the saw to the rip guide with some hot-melt glue. Place the saw on the panel with its blade projecting evenly through the blade cutout and lift the saw shoe high enough to put a glob of hot glue on the panel. Press the saw against the panel. Now add a little glue at a couple of places along the shoe’s perimeter where it meets the panel. Let the glue cool before you go to work. To remove the saw from the guide, just hold the panel with one hand and pull up firmly with the other. Peel off any glue that remains on the guide or the saw’s shoe.

After you’ve applied some hot glue between the saw’s shoe and the rip guide’s panel, also run a couple of short beads between the shoe’s edge and the panel. There’s no need to go crazy here. A couple of globs, each about an inch long, are strong enough to hold the saw to the lightweight guide. Using an appropriate amount of glue will also help you pull the saw free easily after ripping is complete.

The rip guide couldn’t be easier to use. Just clamp the board to the work surface and steer the guide through the cut.

Provide gentle pressure against the fence to keep it on the edge of the workpiece. Then just slide the rip guide and saw down the length of the piece of lumber.

Some kiln-dried lumber will pinch against the saw blade during a rip cut. This occurs because tension is released as the saw blade severs the wood fibers which have internal stresses built up in them, causing the wood to close up the kerf created with the saw blade. If this happens, use the thumb and index finger of your freehand to hold the saw kerf open as you complete the cut. You can also keep a shim handy and insert that in the kerf.

T Blocks

T blocks are an old-school solution that has a number of applications. They are nothing more than two pieces of scrap wood nailed together forming a T: a plywood base and an upright–both sawn out of whatever you have handy. I make these T blocks the same height as the base on my miter saw. That way, they support lumber that overhangs the saw table. But they have many other uses. Clamped to a workbench or a piece of plywood supported by a pair of sawhorses, they form outriggers that give you clear access to the workpiece. They also support a workpiece allowing you to cut or drill through it without damaging the work surface. Also, T blocks are a sacrificial work surface, if your sawing operation causes the blade to pass through the block’s upright, no harm is done. When the T block gets sufficiently chewed up, replace it with a new one. Another advantage of using T blocks is that when a workpiece is supported on them, the off-cut falls only as far as the work surface, not to the floor. Finally, T blocks can support long pieces of lumber on a work surface so you can paint or stain them without slopping paint onto the adjacent surface.

A T block is an indispensable work aid made from scrap materials. Here, it’s a piece of 2 x 4 that was mounted to a piece of 3/4-inch plywood. It equals the height of my miter saw table and supports the workpiece when it’s longer than the saw table. Attach the parts with finish nails or brads and some glue. T blocks hold a workpiece above the work surface, allowing easier and safer work, or they can support the same workpiece to allow it to be more easily painted or stained.

Roy Berendsohn

Senior Home Editor

Roy Berendsohn has worked for more than 25 years at Popular Mechanics, where he has written on carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, electrical, woodworking, blacksmithing, welding, lawn care, chainsaw use, and outdoor power equipment. When he’s not working on his own house, he volunteers with Sovereign Grace Church doing home repair for families in rural, suburban and urban locations throughout central and southern New Jersey.