Special Delivery

Now that my (almost daily) delivery drivers can't pull up right in front of the porch, they have to get out of the truck and trudge up my stone path, rain or shine. Since I have this Amazon monkey on my back, I'm starting to feel sorry for the poor folks who are forced to support my habit.

To make their lives a little easier (and to give me something fun to build), I worked up a design for a package mailbox that they could reach right from the truck.

 

Because it will be out in the weather I decided to make it out of construction lumber, specifically rough-sawn 1x4s available from my local lumberyard. 

I made the boards into tongue-and-groove, complete with a little bead detail. Tongue-and-groove boards support each other and allow for expansion and contraction. Important for wood that will live outside.

Screws are in the center of each board, so the board can easily expand and contract, and I used spacers to make sure they all had breathing room.

These planks can swell and shrink all they want without buckling.

Diagonal bracing is notched into the post and held in place with what  boatbuilders used to call "trunnels" (tree nails) - wooden pegs, round(ish) for most of their length to be driven into a drilled hole, and left square on the outer end to bite into the wood like the head of a nail.

The pegs are dry and the post is green, so when the green wood dries out and shrinks, it will clamp down on the peg and never let go. Old-timers built chairs this way; inserting dry stretchers into holes drilled in green parts.  The older the chair, the tighter the grip on the inserted peg.

The mail lady, who doesn't have to bring my packages all the way up to my house, but always has, is named Rosa.  So the rose is kind of in her honor.