Carpentry Tools for the Garden

I use basic carpentry tools in the garden to help with the garden maintenance but also find them very useful when I need to make small items like garden stakes for netting and plant supports. The tools are the really basic ones as shown and I use them mainly for cutting jobs. I recently acquired a large number of wooden railway sleepers and some of them had to be cut to shape to support my raised beds.

Making Benches

Garden benches are very simple to make. When I was tree cutting once I had to remove 2 trees which were 5 foot apart. I cut them off evenly at 18” above the soil leaving 2 circular discs of about 8” in diameter each. 

I had some old stair tread lengths and placed a 5’ length between the 2 stumps. I nailed the plank into position and hey presto I had a garden seat come bench. I varnished the seat to preserve it. The 2 carpentry tools required were a saw and a hammer.

Wooden outdoor furniture

I have attempted to make more difficult wooden garden furniture including a proper bench from seasoned wood from the sawmill. I am not a carpenter but I drew up a plan of a neighbors bench (with her permission, of course) and proceeded to make my own bench for my porch. I will not be going into commercial production but the finished bench suits my needs. I used a good saw (not my usual Bushman), the timber was good quality beech, and I used screws to bolt the whole thing together. My mains power drill has a ‘slow’ feature which allow you to insert screws and takes away all the hard work. I discovered that drilling pilot holes helped greatly too, as did the application of grease to the screw threads.

Garden steps

Where the garden levels vary it is a good idea to have garden steps built joining the two areas. These I have made with old posts and timber lengths of 3 x 2 inches. The posts are fixed into the soil and the frame is made with the 3x2 lengths. I fix these securely with screws rather than nails as the screws offer better solidity to the whole structure.

Garden swing

I have made a garden swing using existing trees where I tied the 4 ropes from two trees and constructed a seat from a thick piece of timber. The timber was oak and the piece measured 32 inches long by 10 inches wide and 3 inched thick. I drilled four ½ inch holes, one at each corner of the wood making sure I kept 1 inch in from all edges. I tied one rope to each corner and tied securely. I used nylon rope which gave a combined breaking strain of over 800 lbs. and the tools used here were a hand drill (bit and brace), drill bit and a ruler. I did, however, climb the trees to attach the upper ropes.

Wooden planters

Again using only a saw and a hammer I have saved many dollars by making my own plant boxes from wood. A small pedestal can be made simply in the form of a 3 tiered wooden platform which is ideal for keeping pots up from the ground at a workable height I no longer buy plastic pots and containers because of my new found skills with carpentry tools.