Building a Garden Trellis
Well... Here we go again... Keeping in the spirit of the birdhouse project and the bird cam, let's see if we can't come up with a respectable vine trellis for our little garden...
Things to consider...
- We want a small, wooden, traditional, open structure 32" wide, apx. 6' tall, and two or three feet deep. At this stage we're not concerned with the exact height or
depth, but the entry width needs to be 32". The drawing below gives a general idea.
Here, the fellow is stepping out one of the two open ends. While the framework above is greatly simplified, hopefully, you get the idea. (You can see one of the actual sides in the background of the next pic.)
- We could make the trellis skeleton, but quite honestly it's cheaper to just buy two pre-made. (That was easy!)
- The structure itself will not contact the ground. Instead, four pressure-treated 2x4s will be sunk, and the legs will be bolted onto those. (There's no sense in exposing untreated wood to soil... Who needs rot?)
- If there's a trick here, it has to do with the arched top. There are two challenges... First, the arch has to be designed properly, and secondly, it has to be built properly.
For the design, we harked back to the age-old, rectangular "Golden Ratio" of 1.6:1. (That means that the width of the arch should be roughly 3.2 times as long as its
height, or 9.25" tall at its peak.) The second issue is that of assembly. I chose to rip umpteen strips of wood 3/32" thick and glue them into a laminated arch. The form for
that arch was simplicity itself. Two screws were driven into the workbench 32" apart, a line was drawn between the screws, halved, and a third screw was secured
perpendicular to the halfway point of the line at a distance of 9 1/4"... Then it was just a matter of a lot of wood strips, weatherproof glue, and lots and lots of clamps.
So far, so good... Next time, we'll see if we can't put the pieces together, slather some rain-resistant goo on the beast, plant a few 2x4 support stubs, bolt her up tight, and finish this puppy off!
See you by the feeders, and you might just want to bring along an adjustable wrench!
CapeCodAlan
P.S. The simple CAD drawing was done with Google's free "SketchUp" -- good stuff.
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