Make a Handmade Casket Using Air-Dried Lumber

Build a handmade casket using air-dried lumber for an earth-friendly funeral.

Make a Handmade Casket

If you have the skills, tools and inclination to build a solid wood coffin like
I did, then you probably don’t need me to tell you how. What might be less clear is how to make a more direct
connection to the forest by selecting and air-drying your own lumber. That’s a specialty of mine, a technique I
learned when I began buying wood directly from small country sawmills back in the early 1980s. Building with this
lumber saves money and yields better material to make a coffin.

What surprises some folks is that you don’t need a kiln to prepare wood that’s
dry enough for reliable use indoors. And the drying process doesn’t even take that long. I select logs and have them
cut into boards 1 to 3 inches thick. Immediately after sawing I stack the boards in the shade (though not in a
building), with spacers between each layer. That’s where the wood sits for six to eight weeks during the spring,
summer or fall while moisture content drops to about 14 percent. At this state, the wood is dry enough for rough
cutting, but not yet ready for final fitting.

After sawing to length and width, I smooth boards using a bench-top thickness
planer (you could have this done at a sawmill), bringing them down to 1/8 inch thicker than final size before
restacking the wood indoors for final air drying.

Three or four weeks of heated indoor storage brings 1-inch-thick softwoods down
to the 7 percent to 9 percent moisture content required for fine work.