We live off the road about a hundred yards or so. The refuse bin needs to be taken up to the road for pick up. I did make a handle that makes it easier to haul the bin up to the road, but sometimes that is a lot of effort. Especially when it has been raining or snowing.

So years ago I made a platform that could attach to our car via the trailer hitch mounting. That vehicle eventually went to the great dismantler in the skies over Seattle. So a platform was built to attach to my truck.

With recycling, sometimes weeks go by without needing to take the garbage bin to the curb. With three cats the bin can get heavy in that time. With my advancing age it can be difficult to lift when really full.

My solution was to build a ramp. This is often the extent of my plans for building something.

a The Plan.jpg

Just a simple drawing to work out some math and away we go. The length of the hypotenuse was set at six feet since that is the length of the 1X8s for this project.

Lumber was cut to size and set on the bench for the first side.

b Lumber on the Bench WIP.jpg

This image is actually taken after the next image for marking the placement of saw cuts for the angled half lap joints.

c Joinery layout.jpg

The lap shoulder was cut first, visible as a dark line in this image.

d Cutting Angled Half Lap Joint.jpg

A piece of the scrap worked well as not only a support but worked well with my vises that tend to rack. Also when there is small scrap my tendency is to take it to the drill press with a forstner bit to make an anti-rack block for the job.

e Vise Antirack block.jpg

After sawing the lap joints the piece were test fit.

f Test Fitting.jpg

Clean up of the joints and any trimming adjustments were done with rabbet planes.

g #10-1:2 Cleaning Lap Joint.jpg

h Shoulder Plane on Lap Wall.jpg

A shoulder plane is a type of rabbet plane.

After the joints were satisfactorily fitted, these pieces were assembled using #12 brass screws. These were round head screws that came in an organizer drawer case my brother gave me. The placement was by eye. The holes were first bored with a forstner bit to set the head below the surface. Then another bit was used to bore the pilot holes. Candle wax was used on the threads to ease their installation.

The cross brasses were cut to be just a little longer than the platform is wide.

The image limit means this needs to be continued later.

jtk