HHWW: Wheatgrass Trellis
A while back I saw this video about growing wheat grass fodder.
View on YouTube
It took my fancy as we need additional fodder for the chickens.
I worked up a design in SketchUp a couple of months ago:
With the plastic garden trays in:
I decided to half lap the whole thing. It's a very basic joint, and seemed a good place to start. I planned to screw it together so I could break it down if needed later on. As if to make up for the simplicity of the joints, I decided I wanted to make the lips the tray rest on part of the cross members. I could have just used strips, but hey.
The final cross-members look like this, and were cut on the tablesaw using MicroJig Grippers. (They surely do rock, those Grippers!):
This project is one-half utility, one-half woodworking exercise. I've never done designed a thing from scratch like this, never cut half laps, never nibbled a joint on the tablesaw, never done compound cuts as on the cross members, never laid out a thing and needed it to fit properly…lots of firsts here.
Here's how it turned out:
I managed to overcut one set of the grooves in the vertical 1 cm too wide and cut a couple of the half laps a little too thin. I didn't bother with the shorter top members, and I left the bottoms of the verticals whole while half-lapping the cross members. I turned them to the outside to slightly widen the footprint, for stability or something. I also added crossmembers near the middle for needed support.
It's made from 38Ă—57 battens from the building center. I do not claim it to be anything great but it will do the job and it taught me some things about the way it's made. It is sturdy, and stable, and as the second thing I've ever made, it's good enough for me to be pleased with.
A while back I saw this video about growing wheat grass fodder.
View on YouTube
It took my fancy as we need additional fodder for the chickens.
I worked up a design in SketchUp a couple of months ago:
With the plastic garden trays in:
I decided to half lap the whole thing. It's a very basic joint, and seemed a good place to start. I planned to screw it together so I could break it down if needed later on. As if to make up for the simplicity of the joints, I decided I wanted to make the lips the tray rest on part of the cross members. I could have just used strips, but hey.
The final cross-members look like this, and were cut on the tablesaw using MicroJig Grippers. (They surely do rock, those Grippers!):
This project is one-half utility, one-half woodworking exercise. I've never done designed a thing from scratch like this, never cut half laps, never nibbled a joint on the tablesaw, never done compound cuts as on the cross members, never laid out a thing and needed it to fit properly…lots of firsts here.
Here's how it turned out:
I managed to overcut one set of the grooves in the vertical 1 cm too wide and cut a couple of the half laps a little too thin. I didn't bother with the shorter top members, and I left the bottoms of the verticals whole while half-lapping the cross members. I turned them to the outside to slightly widen the footprint, for stability or something. I also added crossmembers near the middle for needed support.
It's made from 38Ă—57 battens from the building center. I do not claim it to be anything great but it will do the job and it taught me some things about the way it's made. It is sturdy, and stable, and as the second thing I've ever made, it's good enough for me to be pleased with.