Wooden Rain Barrel

Drill a hole through the faces of the long pieces that butt up against the rabbet (a pair towards each end) and insert/glue appropriately-sized dowels. This will give the screws some good grain to grab and hold. Your screws will then be passing through the side grain of the dowels. I don’t know if that description is making sense.

Don’t want screws going into endgrain if you can help it, and this is one solution/fix. It is more work, but I think it looks good when it’s done.

Sketched this up. This is what I meant.

Thanks Randy, good call on the dowels.

-- Dan Chiappetta, NYC, http://www.9x7woodworks.com

Make sure it’s covered to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs in it.

Joke: Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes when he had the chance?

-- Regret- the feeling you get just after you do something really stupid.

Randy, What is the deal with screws in end grain? Split out too easy? Most framing is done with nails in end grain. What is teh difference?

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence Wake Up America!! Please read; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0

http://woodgears.ca/shop-tricks/endgrain_screw.html

Check the link. End grain just doesn’t hold screws well. Yes, you frame a house with nails in endgrain, but the way I figure, there aren’t forces trying to pull the walls up and down, stressing them apart. They are compressed by the weight of the roof, etc.

So I dunno, that’s just my poor man engineering thought process on framing. :)

Good points. That woodgears article about a bed frame makes a good point. Lots of stresses going on there! Sort of what I figured, but being the curious type I thought I’d ask for more info. Thanks.

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence Wake Up America!! Please read; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0

... when you are done, we’d love to see this over at GardenTenders as well!!

-- ~ Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

I think I would put one or more supports across the top. Barrels are round for a reason, that is the shape that yours will want to assume when filled. My BIL built a wall for an oval pool. He didn’t support the sides of the pool, and ended up with a cellar full of water when the pool converted from oval to round. His mark II had supports for the sides . . . .

-- Fred, Springfield, Ma

Please explain, is picture 2 the rain barrel or a riser to hold up a barrel? If this is the barrel it doesn’t have the strength to contain the static water pressure inside. Why not just get a plastic 55 gal. drum and build a nice box around it? As for a stand some lapped PT 4×4s w/ 3/4 ply on top will male a strong long lasting stand. Please disregaurd if I am seeing this wrong.
MIKE

-- See pictures on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/44216106@N07/ And visit my Facebook page - facebook.com/MTEnterprises

Pic 2 is indeed the water structure. This needs to fit a small area so a round drum is sort of out of the question. The volume of water will not be even close to any sort of pool, so the stresses should be much, much less. That is a good call regarding the pressure on the sides, though, I will definitely need to reinforce this and perhaps adjust dimensions to create less height. I don’t really think it’s a matter of if it can/can’t support the load, but rather what needs to be done to support the load. 400lbs is not really an unreasonable amount of weight in a construction environment.

-- Dan Chiappetta, NYC, http://www.9x7woodworks.com