Compost Bins

One of the things we tried to do at the old house was composting. It didn't really work well since we couldn't keep the compost pile warm enough. Getting sunlight all day in our new backyard, we decided to step up our compost game. Stacey and I looked for something that would be cheap enough to get started and large enough to accommodate all of our compostable materials.

We planned on composting not only our grass clippings and food waste but dog poop as well. Since we wanted to be able to use some of our compost for gardening type applications we decided to make two compost bins one for food safe use and one for general yard and plant use.

Materials: 

• 6 - 1"x6"x12' pine boards

Tools: 

• Miter saw
• Table saw
• Chisel
• Hammer
• Clamps (helpful not necessary)

The first step was to cut the boards to length. I wanted the compost bin to be around 3'x3' in size. Having purchased 12' boards I was able to cut them into four equally sized 3' boards. The lumber was all over sized enough to accommodate this. If you don't have a miter saw you can use a circular saw instead. If you do use a miter saw I would recommend setting some sort of stop block to make cutting all of the pieces easier. You can see a piece I have clamped down at the end of my workbench. 

I was inspired by Lincoln Logs and used that as the basis of my design.

If you want to follow the math, read this section. If not, the next section will tell you the dimensions to use. Take half of the 5 3/4" wide board which is 2 7/8". Now take half of the spacing gap we want which is 1/4" and subtract that from 2 7/8" to get 2 5/8". Lastly, since we will be having two boards to connect to each other we need to split this gap between both boards so half of the 2 5/8" which is 1 5/16". I've attached a diagram to make it a bit easier to visualize.

If you have a cross-cut sled it will make this easier, but if not you can still do this with your miter gauge. You want to make two cuts a little bit larger in width that the width of the boards so that they will be able to stack together. The depth of the cut assuming your boards are 5 3/4" tall should be 1 5/16". This will give you a 1/2" gap when you stack your boards to allow for airflow. The cuts should be in about 1 1/2" in from the end. We want to leave enough material there so they don't break from pressure. Make this cut on both sides and the top and bottom.

When I made the first compost bin I used my bandsaw to cut out the holes and they went together a bit tight and broke couple of the ends off. The table saw provided a much better cut that was more consistent and the assembly went much better as well.

This is the fun part. Get our your chisel and hammer, ITS HAMMER TIME! You want your chisel to be around 3/4 inch wide. If its a little under its okay, the pieces should pretty much pop out.

You will want to rip a board in half as close as possible as you can get to half, making sure you account for 1/8" of an inch for the kerf of the blade when you cut this. The kerf does not refer to the width of the blade but the gap the blade leaves behind it in the wood, I didn't know this until I started woodworking. We need these two pieces to be able to stabilize the base when building the compost bin.

After cutting all of the pieces I put the compost bin together in my workshop to see how it fit. Everything went together pretty good. After that I had Stacey help me carry the bin out to the backyard where we filled it up.

You can see the compost is pretty dark already. That is just two week old grass clippings and food waste.

I try to mow my lawn every two weeks and I have been bagging the clippings and dumping them in here. After I get done mowing the bin is pretty full, however by the time I am ready to mow the next time there seems to be enough room again, so I think its working.

We did buy a five tine pitch fork to help mix the compost. It is much easier to do with that than with a shovel or hoe.