Box-O-Lantern

FrankEV · September 26, 2023

First things first. A big thanks to Barry (flarud) for the inspiration and kindly shared information. I read his post “Jacks” in Bragging Rights of Aug 21 and later his update on Aug 26. I really liked his “Jacks” as he calls them. They are simply a wood box with a Jack-o-Lantern face and the box painted Orange. He lit them up like you do for a Pumpkin Jack-O-Lantern. Boy oh boy are they cute. Just had to make some.

I made eight, I call Box-O-Lanterns,using cheap cedar wood fence slats that are a nominal 5 ½” wide by very rough sawn to about 5/8” thick by 6’ long. I ran the slats through my planer, to make them a uniform ½” thick and clean on both sides. The rough sawn was just a little tooooo rough for me. I cut all the parts at one time, but due to a limited quantity of long clamps I had to assemble them one at a time. All cutting, assembly and painting was done in just two days.

I purchased two SGV bundles of Faces from Etsy for just a few dollars. I chose eight that I resized, using Inkscape, to a 4 ½” width. This looked proportionally good to me in the 5 ½” wide box I had decided to make. All eight were cut with a Pegas #5 MGT R Blade in one two-hour cutting session.

This was a mass production project, and done very quickly, to make my very rustic and rough version. I decided on the size and started cutting the wood before having the chance to contact Barry and find out what his sizes were. His are much smaller. My box is 5 ½” square using mitered corners, 10 ½” tall. The top and bottom are 6 ½’ square, glued up from a 5 ½” and a 1” piece. On top of the Top is a 4 ½” square piece I beveled just for looks, again, like what Barry had done on his.

On top of that piece, I added a scroll cut “pumpkin” stem that is painted green. After assembly, just using glue, I rough sanded the entire assembly with 150 grit paper in my palm sander just to clean up glue squeeze out and to get rid of the pencil lines I made for glue-up. I used my small torch to add some burn marks and then lightly spray painted everything (except the stem) Pumpkin Orange, allowing the grain and torch marks to show.

I went the cheap way for lights also. I purchased from Amazon two 4 packs of Accessory Cords that have a candelabra socket on one end (with a holder for a 1 ¼” hole mounting), an inline switch and a plug on the other end. These are like what is used in plastic decorations sold in stores. I also bought a package of twenty-five equivalent 7W Orange LED bulbs. I’ll have extras for a long time to come.

This was a fun project. I did not make an overall pattern. The only patterns were the faces I chose to use, appropriately located in a 5 ½” x 10 ½´retangle, for positioning purposes.

Had to take the following pic outside as they are to many for my photo booth.