Hi there.
We're going to show you today how to put together a simple letterbox.
It's a project that could be accomplished in a Saturday afternoon probably.
We'll take you through the steps, measuring the materials, cutting the materials, roof,
back, sides of the letterbox, and putting it together.
We'll look at the tools now that you're going to need to accomplish the letterbox.
Here we've got our power screwdriver, a saw, a hammer, definitely a tape measure, a square,
a pencil, dowels to use for the hinges, numbers - if you choose to put numbers on the letterbox,
screws, a knob, and glue - you can use an exterior grade glue if you choose.
When working with woodworking tools we always need to think of safety.
We have our safety goggles to protect the eyes, hearing protection which is very important,
and a dust mask to protect us against dust.
The material we've chosen on this occasion is a pine plywood.
Plywood is easy to cut, easy to work with, so that's what we're going to use today.
Okay, let's get started on our letterbox.
This is a sheet of ply 1200 by 450, a commonly available size.
This will allow us to cut all of the eight pieces we need for the letterbox project.
The first thing to do is to measure up for the different sizes we need.
We need the roof, the back, the sides.
I've looked at that.
We just need to mark them out on the sheet.
It's a fairly useful sheet, the 450 by 1200 sheet, for this letterbox.
There's not going to be a lot left over.
I'm going to mark out all of the pieces on this sheet in one go, and then I'm going to
cut them all as one operation.
You'll need a straight edge of some sort to make a line.
You can use a piece of wood if you wish.
Okay, we have our sheet marked out with the sizes we're going to need.
Now we'll go to the cutting stage.
Remember, safety's important, so on this occasion I'm going to wear a mask.
We'll just proceed to cut all of the pieces one at a time.
We've now cut our eight pieces to size.
They're still a little rough around the edge, so we can take this opportunity to sand the
edges if we wish.
It's always a good idea if you're going to use screws to pre-drill the holes.
So, if you know, work out where the holes are going to be and just drill positions for
the screws.
That'll avoid splitting near the edges.
It can be a little confusing putting pieces together that look the same, so it's always
a great idea to label the part, which part's the inside, which part is upwards, before
you attempt to put them together.
Because it's very easy to make mistakes.
In this case we've got the pieces here from the base or chassis of the letterbox, and
over here later on going to put the roof on.
So, to start with I'm going to choose the base of the letterbox and I'm going to attach,
first of all, this side.
I've already drilled the holes, including the dowel hole for the front door flap where
the letters will be collected.
So, I'm going to proceed to just put together the sides and will proceed to screw the sides
on.
Okay, well at this stage the sides are on, and now we'll proceed to put the back and
the front on.
The door is there, and the other part where the letters come in is here.
So we can put this on.
The door is hinged using dowels.
What we do with the door is we put the dowel through with
a hammer.
Okay, that's the door.
Now we've just got to put the roof on, and this is the bottom section of the roof.
Now for ease I'm going to put the gable together separately.
Now that's finished.
We'll put that over here.
Goes on top.
Now we've got our letterbox assembled.
We can think about whether you want to paint it, stain it, varnish it, et cetera.
And you probably do that now before you put the knob on.
We've chosen a little chrome knob here to go on the inside door for when we go to collect
our letters.
As I say, you would normally paint it or stain it before you put the knob on.
Okay, well there it is, all finished.
That wasn't too hard.
If you need any further advice, visit your local Bunnings Warehouse, where our friendly
team members will be only too eager to help you.