Wood Trellis

I was casually walking around to the back corner of my house, the part I rarely visit, when I saw about 20 roses in full bloom! I think the most I have ever seen on this plant was 3 or 4. Evidently when Lauren cut it back last fall it really helped it take off this year. With all the roses and the 20-30 unopened buds the plant was nearly laying on the ground under all of it's weight. So I pulled a chapter from dad's woodworking projects. Simple (but great) wood trellis made from 1 board, a few bolts and some screws.

These are the best projects. Using scrap lumber, extra hardware laying around and just eying the dimensions instead of running a tape. I started with a scrap board I had in my garage. Wanting at least 4 verticals I set my table saw to cut approximately 1/2" strips. This gave me 6 strips leaving 2 extra ones for the horizontal members.

I clamped 4 strips together and drilled holes for the 3 bolts I had laying around.

Once set I splayed the strips at the unbolted end and clamped on some horizontal pieces at random. Once I was happy with where they were I drilled some more holes and screwed the strips together. For these small projects where the wood is relatively soft and I don't want to take the time to grab my countersink bits I'll use the end of my driver bit which is just enough to help keep the boards from splitting.

Looks good enough.


And after wrestling a thorny rose bush with my bare hands this is what I was able to do. Not too shabby, took 10-15 minutes and it didn't cost me a dime!