How to Build a Wooden Mailbox

Ron's first Los Angeles visit took him into the heart of the San Fernando Valley. Located in the shadow of the Hollywood Hills, the valley is home to many of the major film and television studios and the people who work in them. Here in the community of Studio City, Steve Ledoux makes his living as a television graphics designer but he is hoping his hobby will lead to early retirement. Steve enters countless contests and sweepstakes and has already won thousands of dollars in prizes. All he needed was a new, larger mailbox to handle all the mail he receives. Ron was more than willing to help.

Click Here For a list of what you will need in order to complete this project.

1. Design a custom mailbox:

• When designing Steve's mailbox, Ron took two things into consideration. First, he wanted to make sure it would be large enough to handle the size and volume of mail that Steve had been receiving. Secondly, when a mailbox gets to be that big, it needs to blend well with the house.

• Together Steve and Ron designed a wall-mounted mailbox. The box would be crafted from solid wood and it would consist of two main parts, a frame and a bin. The bin was designed to sit inside the frame and be hinged at the bottom so that it could be opened and closed.

• Since this project required accurate cross cuts with the table saw, Ron decided to construct a simple accessory called a cradle. This was like a wooden sled that allowed them to easily hold the wood in position as they cut. They started with strips of wood called runners. Ron placed small pieces of double-sided carpet tape and a bead of glue on one side of each strip of wood.

• The runners were set into the table saw grooves, glue side up.

• Ron and Steve then pressed a piece of plywood down onto the runners, which formed the bottom of the cradle. They set the plywood down so that the front edge was just about even with the front of the runners. The double stick tape acted as a temporary clamp holding the runners to the bottom of the plywood.

• When they turned the plywood over, the rails were positioned exactly where they were needed.

• They used a pneumatic nail gun to nail the runners in place then flipped the cradle back over for a quick test. Ron turned on the saw and raised the blade so that it cut through the center of the cradle. He stopped the cut a few inches from the end.

• They applied glue to the edge of a 1 x 3, set the wood on the rear edge of the plywood, used a framing square to make sure it was perfectly perpendicular to the saw blade and then clamped it into position.

• They carefully turned the cradle over and secured the fence with finish nails once again using a pneumatic nail gun.

• They repeated this process for a second fence on the front edge of the cradle. The new cradle they created would give them very accurate cuts and a lot of control.

• Ron also created a stop block to be used along with the saw cradle. This attachment could be clamped anywhere along the rear edge of the fence and once in place would enable them to duplicate pieces of lumber cut to exactly the same length.

3. Cut wood:

• They began by cutting one of the sides of the mailbox. Ron wanted to cut the corner off to add a bit of detail.

• The rear fence of the table saw cradle was used to make very accurate straight cuts.

• By temporarily attaching an auxiliary fence, the cradle could also be used to make very precise angle cuts.

• Using the cradle and the auxiliary fence, the two sides of the mailbox were perfect matches.