I built my own coffin
Well sure, why not! Haha!
I love building Halloween projects. It’s my absolute favorite holiday of the year! I made a small, coffin-shaped candy box a couple years ago and decided to ramp it up and go full sized this year. I built my own coffin!
Mostly, I wanted this to be a stylized prop coffin. It should take the form of the classic “toe pincher” coffin we’ve all seen, but I wanted it to look old and creepy. I’m not exactly sure why someone would have an old creepy coffin. Maybe they dug it up to reuse it? I dunno, but it just looks cooler this way.
To achieve this, I needed it to actually be functional. Well, hold a full-sized body, but constructed in a way that looks at though it were slapped together. I used solid pine boards and made sure to leave cracks between them. It was kind of fun picking them out at Home Depot, looking for warped and knotty boards!
The sides are quite sturdy. I used pocket screws to join the boards together, making two long panels.
The trickiest part was cutting out the bevels where the sides join together. I used my table saw for this.
Next, I “tacked” the head of the coffin together with screws. This this is just to help hold it’s shape while I can install the braces. Screwing into the end grain alone like this would make for a very weak connection.
The braces are beveled along one edge to match the angles of the boards and screwed into the sides and edge grain.
Then I repeated this procedure for the lower half of the coffin.
Using a couple of pipe clamps I pulled the two halves together and installed braces to connect them.
I cut a shallow bevel along the face of these braces.
I laid out boards for the base of the coffin and carefully set the sides on them.
I connected these base boards together using short boards and screwed them in at cockeyed angles. These are the only boards holding the base together, but once it’s screwed to the sides, the coffin will have a lot of strength.
Once these braced were screwed in place, I drew an outline of the coffin, all around the sides and cut out the base using my circular saw.
Next, I did the same routine with the boards for the lid.
I stained the box using a dark stain, letting it go on blotchy as possible…no pre-stain conditioner! Then I painted some hinges black and attached them.
To further age the coffin, I sprayed black paint in random blotches.
Finally, I drilled holes in the sides and added some rope handles, knotted on the inside.
Plans
I’m sorry I didn’t have time to draw up detailed plans this week, but these will at least help you to understand the angles you will need to make your own.
