Lillooet Food Matters: Build a Wooden Compost Bin

This weekend I finished my first ever carpentry project: a wooden compost bin. I have a black plastic bin, but it's full and the compost isn't finished. It was the perfect opportunity to build my own bin, something I've been wanting to do for a while. I wanted to build a bin that allowed for easy turning of the compost, since my goal this year is to make a lot of compost fast, which requires a lot of turning according to my research. I found this plan on a gardening blog. The compost bin has four stacking tiers. When the compost bin in full and ready to be turned, the first tier is taken off the pile and set on the ground beside the bin. Then the compost is shovelled into the new location, re-stacking the tiers as you go.

Building the bin was interesting - it took me an entire four day weekend to gather the tools and materials, mostly because I didn't use power tools and didn't have the right materials. The first 30 or so screws were monumentally difficult to screw in, resulting in a lot of swearing and whining and blistered hands. Finally my boyfriend piped in that he's a screw expert, since he used to work at a screw factory (who knew?) and I was using the wrong kind of screw. The new wood screws worked much better than whatever I had found on the floor of my shed.

Here are the plans if you like. I used cedar lumber, which cost about $50. If you can find free scrap wood, this plan could be adjusted to whatever lumber you have.

Materials
8 - 1x6" cedar fence boards, 6' long
1 - cedar 2x4, 10' long
1 - 1lb box of wood screws, 1 1/2" long
Screwdriver or power drill
Hand or power saw
Measuring tape
Pencil
Carpenter's square

Instructions
1. Cut the fence boards in half. This will leave you with 16 pieces, each 3 feet long.

2. Cut the 2x4 into 7" pieces. You need 16 of them - these are the legs.

3. Make 16 identical leg/board pieces that make up the sides of the bin. Position a leg on one end of a board, 1" from the top edge. Screw the leg onto the board using three screws, as shown below. Make 15 more of these leg/board pieces, each identical to the first one.

4. Now, use four leg/board pieces to assemble one tier of the bin. Arrange two of the leg/board pieces at right angles, and screw together at the corner using two screws - it should look like the photo below. Use a square to keep everything at right angles. Screw together two more pieces onto this to form a tier.