Plywood Flower Pot

Robin Lewis
by Robin Lewis
9 Materials
Easy
This wooden flower pot is easy to make and requires only a few basic tools.
Start by taking your sheet of plywood and cutting it into squares. There's a few ways of doing this. I created a 100m cube, keep that in mind when choosing the thickness of your plywood. I calculated that I would need 10 layers of 10mm plywood.
Next, find the centre point of each square. This can be done by marking both diagonals and where they intersect is the centre.
Cut a hole into the square using a hole saw. Keep in mind that you want around 10mm of wall thickness at least. Anything less and there won't be very much surface for the glue to work on. With that in mind the hole saw that I used had a diameter of 79mm.
After all the squares have been cut sand off any rough edges to make sure the glue has good contact later.
Any wood glue will work for this, make sure to coat each surface thoroughly.
Use a speed square to line all the glued plywood squares up and once you're happy clamp them together. You might want to use a heavy object on top of the plywood, or if you have clamps you can use those.
After the glue dries sand the box flush. Depending how close you got with the glue will determine how much sanding you need to do. This step can be sped up using a belt sander.
Drill 3 holes in the bottom of the box. Make these holes using a 10mm bit or bigger. These will become the drainage holes but we want them slightly oversize. This'll make sense in a second.
Mix up some epoxy. I used 2 part epoxy because it's relatively cheap and easy to find.


Add some painters tape to the underside of the box so that the epoxy doesn't run through.
Spread the epoxy around inside the pot. You need to cover EVERYWHERE with the epoxy or the moist soil will eventually break down the glue join.
I applied 2 coats of epoxy, letting each one dry overnight. This might've been excessive but I wanted to make sure everything was covered.
After the epoxy dries drill a small hole through the drainage holes. Here you can see the reason for making the first hole oversize; now when you drill through the epoxy the inside of the drainage hole is also covered in epoxy. This means that no water will be absorbed into the plywood.


You can also see the foot that I made for the pot. This is optional and in hindsight I kind of wish I hadn't added it, it doesn't compliment the overall look.
Now you can sand the entire piece. I stopped at 180 grit.
All that's left is to add some kind of finish to the outside (I used boiled linseed oil) and then you're ready to get planting.
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