Another homemade trug ... ...

Warning contains yet more ways to use bits of pallet ! ! !

A while ago I made a small trug from random bits of plywood I had lying about, you can find the post here (opens in a new window) to be honest it was more a decorative thing than an actually functional carrying device.

The other night I was watching Super Scrimpers on channel 4, if you don't watch it you should really check it out, it's a great program, on the episode I watched I saw someone using a trug type basket for collecting their foraged items, so I thought (as I often do) I wonder if I can make something like that, and so today I did, and yes I used bits of pallet.

Here it is -

Mines a little different to the one I saw.

I'm oddly pleased with this for some reason, normally once I've made something I tend to look at it and start finding faults with it and thinking about how I could have done things differently, this however I'm finding faultless (at least from my point of view) you can see how it's made, it's just two curved bits of wood held together with thin strips of wood, with some natural fibre rope as handles.

This is very easy to make, and another good project for kids to try, especially if they are getting bored, the curve on the bottom is really easy to do, all you need is a few small nails and something bendy.

As I said the curve is easy to make, just mark out a length of wood to use as one of the sides, I made mine 18inches long, but it's up to you how big or small you want to make it.

Here's how to make the curve - 

Here's the wood marked at 18 inches.

Once you have marked out how long you want to make the trug you next need to mark 2 inches done from one edge, do this on each end.

Marking 2 inches down - 

There is a mark at 2 inches, honest.

Once you've marked each end you then need to find the middle of the section of wood, so if, like me you've made it 18 inches long then you need to put a mark at 9 inches.

The middle marked out - 

Next we need 3 small nails.

What we need to do now is put a small nail on each of the marks we've made, so a nail each end at the 2 inch mark and one nail at the 9 inch mark.

Nails all ready - 

I used small brass pins, I also used them to fix the trug together.

Now for the bendy bit, I used my steel ruler, but a piece of plastic trunking, or some other flat bendy substance will do, what you need to do is bend your ruler/trunking and use the nails to hold it in place, see the pictures below.

The curve already to be marked onto the wood - 

You can see how it works.

Here's a rough diagram of how to arrange it all - 

Simple really.

Ta da ! ! ! one curve - 

Not the greatest of pictures.

This is a quick way of making curves on bits of wood, and to be honest this is probably the most complicated bit of building this trug, adding the wooden strips is just a matter of cutting a load of wood and sticking it to the curved sections, I fixed mine with glue and brass nails.

All you need to do is fix the strips onto the curved part of each side - 

Roughly half an inch gap between each strip.

Now you may have noticed that the two centre strips are slightly thicker than the rest, this was just because I had cut enough wood, and I couldn't be bothered to get my table saw out again.

Here's what it looks like underneath - 

Probably best not put anything small in it.

It has gaps in it, so this is more a trug for collecting apples or other such things, as for the handles I had intended to bend a piece of thin wood over the top to make a loop type handle, but the wood I had wouldn't bend very well, so I went with plan 'B' 

(when undertaking any project it's always good to have a plan 'B')

Plan 'B' uses some natural fibre rope, which to be honest I like better, kind of makes it look more rustic ?

To make rope handles is just a case of making two holes in each side and then threading rope through and tying it off, you could also use an old leather belt as a carrying handle.

The rope handles - 

Thread through from the outside.

A simple knot does the job - 

A bit of super glue on the knot will stop it from undoing.

And there you have it, takes hardly anytime or money (if you have a load of wood lying about) and is a good sturdy functional thing, great for collecting fruit and veg when you next go foraging.

Thanks for reading.