Building a Casket - a Pine Box Tribute to My Father

After finishing up my latest woodworking project (a charcuterie board for my neighbor), I was sitting around wondering what my next project would be and thought about my aging father. Hopefully he'll be around for many more years, but as the saying goes, "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

I won't bore you with my thoughts on taxes so I'll just stick with death.

At some point in the near future, my father is going to need a casket and rather than spend thousands of dollars on something produced on an assembly line with no meaningful value, I decided to pay tribute to him by building one.

My idea was to build a raised panel casket where I would include something on each panel that was either important and meaningful to him or displayed something about his life that he experienced or enjoyed. I had recently bought a Sculpfun laser engraver and thought that this would be a good chance to see how it performed and evaluate its capabilities.

Supplies

Tools used:

Table saw
Band saw
Miter saw
Drill
Random orbital sander
Router
Router table with fence
Brad nail gun
Japanese draw saw

Step 1: Questions & Research

Before a design could be started, I needed to do some research to answer the following questions:

Can just anyone build a casket or do you need to have some kind of certification?

What should the dimensions be? Are there any standards?

What kind of materials can it be built out of?

Will a funeral home let me provide my own casket?

Can I save money by building my own casket?

After surfing the internet for a couple of hours, here are the answers I found.

Anyone with some basic carpentry skills can build a casket. No certification is required.

There are no standard dimensions.

You build the casket to the size of the person who is going to use it.

The only requirement is that it fit inside the vault. Vaults come in different sizes.

What is a vault you ask?

A burial vault is a lined and sealed outer receptacle that houses the casket. It protects the casket from the weight of the earth and heavy maintenance equipment that will pass over the grave. It also helps resist water and preserves the beauty of the cemetery by preventing the ground from settling. They are usually constructed of high-strength concrete and reinforced with a metal or plastic liner.

A basic concrete Vault

The interior measurements of a standard burial vault are 86" long x 30" wide x 25" high. As long as your casket fits within the vault, you are good to go.

If your casket is bigger than what would fit in a standard vault, you're gonna need a bigger vault.

You can build your casket out of any kind of material you would like.

Wood

Metal

Plexiglass (that would be weird)

Cardboard?

The only requirement is that it be strong enough to hold the body while being lowered into the vault without falling apart. Try to get that mental picture out of your brain now.

Funeral homes cannot require you to purchase one of their caskets. You are free to provide your own casket.

If anyone tells you otherwise, report them to your state's funeral board.

Here's some late night reading from the Federal Trade Commission on complying with the Funeral Rule

Costs

The average cost of caskets can range anywhere from $1,200 to $6,000 depending on how fancy you want to get.

A wooden casket averages about $1,600

Metal caskets are a little cheaper. Costco's cheapest casket right now is a metal one at $1,200

Material costs for my casket ended up at around $900

Step 2: Design

I always start with a good design. I had played around with Sketchup a few years ago when I built a miter saw station in my wood shop and figured I could dust off the cobwebs in my brain and remember a few things.

I've included the sketchup file below.

Panel casket.skp
Download View in 3D

Step 3: Decide on the Type of Wood

Just remember that there are many different types of wood and they all have different properties.

Hard or Soft

Density or weight (Some are much heavier than others)

Cost

Plywood / Veneers

Availability in your area (Domestic / Exotic)

You'll need to weigh each of the factors above and based on your desires, select your wood. I would suggest keeping the wood light. Keep your pall bearers backs in mind.

I asked my dad what he would want it made out of and his answer was, "I pine box is good enough for me."

So simple pine boards from the local big box store was his choice. I actually ended up going to two different stores sifting through all the boards to get the good stuff.

Step 4: Build a Basic Box

First note - all wood is 3/4" thick unless otherwise noted.

Each of the four sides of the casket can be viewed at as a simple raised panel door with two rails and two stiles with a floating panel in the middle. Rails are usually the horizontal pieces and stiles are the vertical pieces. However, to make things easier for our purposes, we are going to rotate the panel door 90 degrees to make the stiles horizontal.

The longer sides of the casket will have two intermediate rails to allow for the multiple panels equaling a total of four rails.

The short sides will resemble a single door just turned on its' side.

Creating rails and stiles require router bits and a router table. Rather than spend time in this instructable explaining how to create a raised panel door, below are some links that go into great detail. Or do your own internet search.

YouTube - One piece Rail and Stile router bits

YouTube - How to use Rail and Stile router bits to make a cabinet doors

I bought a raised panel router bit kit off of Amazon (Skil 91704)

Normally the panels would be inserted into the rails and stiles at the same time the whole thing is glued up and the panels would be free floating in the grooves. However that's not the way I did it. I hadn't yet decided what images or lettering I wanted on each panel and I knew it would be months before I got around to that part of the project.

But I still wanted to continue building the casket. So I decided to build the side walls but without putting the panels into place. How did I do that you wonder? I just cut off the back of each rail and stile that would have held in the panel in place. Once the panels were finally lasered and complete, I inserted them from the back side and fashioned a couple of clips to keep them permanently in place.

Below is a picture of the backside of one of the long walls.

Red squares are the clips that hold the panels in place.

Rails and stiles are held together with glue and 1 1/4" pocket hole screws (yellow circles).

Inside view of the long side wall showing pocket holes

Measurements for the long side of the box -

Measurements for the short side of the box -

Once all four side walls are complete, they are connected together to form the box using glue and 2 1/2" screws. Make sure the box is square. If it's not square you'll be using some four letter words later on in the project. There is no need to deeply counter sink the screws and fill the holes. Just make them flush with the surface. You'll be covering these up later with a nice thin piece of wood.

The last part of making the box is to cut the bottom out of a sheet of 1/2" plywood. This gets glued and screwed onto the bottom of the side walls. Use plenty of screws. You don't want that image of bodies falling out in your head again.

Image below is the box turned upside down -

Your basic box is now complete.

Step 5: Adding Moulding to the Top and Bottom of the Box

Moulding can be as simple or as complicated as you would like. For my casket I chose a simple profile. A 1/4" radius Roman Ogee and I used it on both the upper and lower moulding.

The upper moulding is 1 1/2" high. The bottom moulding is 3" high. They run around the entire box. Mitered in the corners at 45°. I glued and screwed the moulding on from the inside of the box.

Length measurements are below:

Note - the lip below shown at 1/4" is very important and must exist on both the upper and lower moulding. This will eventually match up with some thin 1/4" strips on the corner that will hide the screw holes.

Step 6: Add Corner Strips to Hide Screw Holes

Time to hide the box joints and screw holes. Each corner uses two pieces of wood. 1 1/4" wide, 12 3/4" long and 1/4" thick mitered along one of the long edges.

To do this I took one piece of wood 2' 6"L x 2 5/8"W x 3/4"H and split it down the middle on the band saw. This left me with two pieces of wood just over a 1/4" thick by 2 5/8" wide. I ran those pieces through a planer to get them exactly 1/4" thick.

Now if your table saw blade is 1/8" wide (like mine) you can set it to a 45° angle and rip the pieces length wise down the middle. Next take the wood over to your miter saw and cut out lengths of 12 3/4". You should now have eight pieces of wood (two for each corner) that fit exactly between the upper and lower moulding of your box and mitered at the corner. I glued and brad nailed them in place.

Step 7: Building the Lid

It's now time to build the lid. You can build the lid as a single piece or split it down the middle as two pieces if you would like to provide for a viewing. I built mine as two pieces. The good news is that these instructions basically build it as a single lid. The last step in the process, if you want two lids, is to cut it in half.

The lid is built in several layers. The base layer consists of a 2 inch wide base frame which hangs over the box edges by 1/2" on all sides. Mitered at 45° at the corners.

For added strength, I cut in biscuits at each 45° corner.

Next comes the crown moulding. It might look fancy and intimidating but once you break it down it's pretty simple.

Below is the profile that I came up with. I based it on a 5" wide piece of 3/4" stock.

Make the 38° angle (A) at the table saw

Make the 52° angle (B) at the table saw

Make the 3/16" cut (C) at the table saw

Make the 3/8" cut (D) at the table saw

Make the V-groove at the router table using a V-groove bit

The tricky part is making the cove cut. We do this at the table saw feeding the stock at an angle. Here's a pic of how I set up my table saw for the cut.

Each pass should only take off a small amount of material so 6 - 9 passes may be necessary. For a Youtube video on how this is done, here's a link - Cove Cuts

Mill your crown moulding boards long enough to account for the 45° cuts you'll be making. Cutting these boards at an angle was the most complicated part of this build for me. But once you understand the geometry, it wasn't difficult at all.

The key is to have a miter saw station with a fence tall enough to catch the top edge of the moulding.

Once you have the moulding in this position, make your miter cuts at 45° as you normally would.

The lengths for each side is shown below:

Now we attached the crown moulding to the lid base keeping the crown edges 1/2" in from the edges of the lid base on all sides. Use glue and brad nails.

For the next layer above the crown moulding we are going to need more material to attached to since it is too thin at the top. For this we just scab on a 3/4" x 3/4" piece of wood flush with the top of the crown moulding. We also add a support brace in the middle (2 1/8" x 16 1/16"). Later, if we want two separate lids, we'll saw through this support piece. In my build I just butted up the ends of the support pieces but if you are concerned with looks (from the inside when the lids are open) you could miter the ends. You would have to adjust the measurements from what is shown below. Glue and brad nails.

The next layer is another piece of moulding using the same 1/4" round Roman Ogee bit on a 1 3/4" piece of stock. Miter the corners at 45°. You also need to add a support piece to the middle of this layer (2 1/8" x 14"). Glue and brad nail to the material you scabbed to the back of the crown moulding.

The last layer consists of two raised panels. The panels were created using a 3 1/2 inch raised panel router bit purchased from Amazon.

Attach the panels roughly 1/2" in from the outside edges of the previous moulding layer. Leave a saw blades width between the two panels in the middle for those of you who want two separate panels.

Step 8: Attaching the Lid to the Box

I found a casket parts store online (Casket Builder Supply) which supplied the following:

Lid Hinges

Latches

Handle Hinges

Handles

Handle end caps

Mechanism to raise and lower the body for viewing

Attaching the lid to the box is easier done while the lid is all one piece. Cutting it in two will come later.

Casket Builder Supply sells a universal casket hardware kit that includes:

Separable hinges for the lid

Support hinges to keep the lid open

Latches

Installation Instructions

The lid hinges can be adjusted a quarter inch or so to make fine adjustments. I placed my hinges at approximately 8" and 32" from the box edge.

These hinges are made to separate easily when the lid is just past 90°. Just lift up and the lid simply comes off the hinges. The support hinges (silver hinge on the side above) locks the lid in place at 90°. Make sure you have a helper when installing these to ensure the lid position is exactly where you want it. Install both of them before sawing the lid in half. I installed mine after I cut the lid in half and now they don't quite line up in the middle. Not sure if it's worth trying to fix it.

Step 9: Installing Lid Latches

The latch must be mortised into the front moulding. You can either do this manually with a hammer and chisel or with a nice 1/2" router bit. I chose the router bit. To do this you'll need a jig. I built this one out of some scrap pieces. The opening is 5 1/2" x 2 1/2". This works for my DEWALT DCW600B 20-Volt MAX cordless router. You'll have to adjust your jig to fit your router.

Line up the front edge of the jig with the front edge of the moulding.

Take off small amounts of wood with multiple passes until you get to the final depth, otherwise you might end up with some tear out . . . which es no bueno. The top of the latch should be flush with the top of the wood.

Once the latches are in place, it's time to add the little ball that gets screwed into the lid. To do this, I got a couple of little helpers (my grandkids). Insert the balls into the latches with the screw end pointing up and close the latch.

The little helpers ensure the screws are pointing straight up while you slowly lower the lid in place until it just touches the ends of the screws. Give a little push and you now have a mark on the lid where to drill a pilot hole for the balls to screw into. Assuming your little helpers have straight eye sight, everything should fit nice and tight.

Step 10: To Cut or Not to Cut

It's time for the big decision. A single lid or two?

For those of you who would like two lids to allow for a viewing, it's time to cut. But remember, there's no turning back.

I used a Japanese pull saw to make my cut.

Draw a straight line from where the two top panels meet down the crown moulding and through the base of the lid. Go slow and use a steady hand. Take the sander to the edges you just cut through to get rid of any saw marks.

If the two sides of the lid end up slightly out of alignment after the cut, remember that the lid hinges have some adjustment in them.

Step 11: Adding Handles

Remember that your casket must fit within the burial vault. Standard vault size is 30" wide by 86" long. Swing handles allow you to build the box bigger than if you had fixed handles because they swing down and out of the way when it's time for the burial. My casket with the handles folded down is 29" by 82".

I purchased my handle hinges from Casket Builder Supply They have a couple of different types you can chose from. I chose the bolt-thru hinges.

Now you must decide where to mount the handle hinges. I didn't want the handles to block any of the panels that I would be lasering on, so I decided to drill my hinge holes at 5" up from the top of the lower moulding (or 8 " from the bottom of the casket). This put the handles in the folded down position just at the bottom edge of each panel.

I also decided to buy the end caps as well.

Based on where I mounted the hinges and the space for the end caps, this put the length of my long handles at 76" and the short handles at 21 1/4".

Casket Builder Supply also sells handles. However their standard length for the long handles is only 72". I didn't find this out until after I had built the box and there was no way to shorten things based on where I had placed the swing hinges. So I called them on the phone and asked if they could sell me longer handles. They said sure, for a fee. Looks like you get hit with a surcharge from the delivery folks for anything over 72". I paid the fee since I didn't want to try and make oval handles myself.

The end caps were very tight to put on so I had to do a little sanding on the ends to get them to fit snuggly. I didn't use any glue, just friction.

The hardest part of installing the handles is setting the strap that goes around the wooden handle. There's a trick to it and it involves the brick chisel below -

The casket store has a video that explains how to strap the hinge onto the handle much better than I could explain it in words. Here is the link - Strap them handles

It actually worked pretty well. To finish off the strap, I put one small screw in one of the holes in the back of each hinge.

Step 12: Adding Lugs

Because the bolt thru swing hinges stick out a bit (3/4") they need something to hide the bolt. Thus we need to create an ornamental "Lug" to cover the ugliness. Not sure where the term lug comes from. These lugs can be any shape you'd like. You can buy lugs from the casket store (option-1, option-2) or you can create your own. I decided to create my own.

A simple rectangle 4" x 2 1/4" with the same Roman ogee profile routered onto the two longs sides and one of the short sides. The other short side will get a 3/4" round section removed where the hinge will slip into.

You will need 12 of these lugs. To make these, cut one or two pieces of stock at 2 1/4" wide. Then set up your router and cut in the profile on both of the longs sides of the boards. Then cut out 12 pieces at 4" each. You now have to finish the routered profile on one of the short sides. Go slow on this short side to avoid tear out. Remember, tear out . . . es no bueno.

All that's left now is cutting in the 3/4" trench hole for the hinge. To do this we go back to the router using a 3/4" straight bit.

Set up your router fence so that the middle of the lug is inline with the middle of the router bit.

Set your stop block so the bit goes approximately 1 3/8" into the lug.

You will only be taking a small amount of material off with each pass. Set the first pass to less than 1/4". Then go up by that amount with each pass until the bit is all the way through (3 or 4 passes).

To attached the lugs to the box, slide the lug all the way down until it touches the top of the hinge, then back up about a 1/16 of in inch. Make sure it's straight up and down. Glue and brad nail from inside the box.

Step 13: Creating Each Panel With Memories

At this point the casket was complete except for the panels. I had some ideas in my head as to what I thought I might include and ran them by my father. He said that he wanted the things that were most important to him to be on the front three panels. That was his family. On some of the other panels he wanted some representation of his 20 year military career in the Navy. And that based on the ideas I had shared with him, I could do whatever I wanted with the rest.

Laser etching on wood is an art in itself. You have to take into account -

the type of wood

the color of the wood

is it an image

is it lettering

is it an SVG rendering (scalable Vector Graphic)

You must determine the speed and power settings of the laser based on all factors above plus the power capabilities of the laser you are using. I selected the popular LightBurn app to create the drawings and images and control the laser. It costs $60. Below is a screen shot of what the LightBurn program looks like -

I bought a Sculpfun S9 5W laser off of eBay. I think I paid about $300. I bought an extension kit because I wanted the ability to laser larger pieces. I figured I could play around with it for awhile while getting my feet wet in the laser world before spending some real money on a better version once I had some knowledge and experience. So far, I'm not disappointed. You be the judge.

Here are the family pictures. I'll let you guess which one is me.

My father was an officer on several different nuclear submarines so on the short end panels I decided to include an emblem image from each submarine he served on. I was able to find a couple of the emblem graphics on the internet but the rest I had to create myself in the LightBurn app based on old patches I found stored away in boxes or plaques he had hanging on his walls.

Here are the end panels -

The middle back panel is dedicated to his 20 year Navy career where he retired with the rank of Lieutenant Commander and his Boy Scouts of America achievements as both a youth and an adult.

The left back panel shows his love of gardening and pays tribute to one of the six houses he built.

The right back panel shows his love for ice cream. I think he's had a bowl of ice cream just about every day of his life. Whenever we visit him we always find the freezer stocked with several different kinds.

The right top panel is reserved for his family tree. He wanted to pay tribute to those who came before him and those he is leaving behind. The fan chart (names are blurred to protect the innocent) shows four generations who came before him on the top and his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren on the bottom.

It has yet to be engraved as we are currently waiting for two more great grandchildren to be born this year and who knows how many more will come before his time is up.

Step 14: Finish Coat

I finished the wood with two coats of a water base polyurethane.

After the first coat was dry, I buffed it with a fine steel wool, then applied the second coat.

Step 15: The Viewing Lift

To allow for a viewing prior to burial, Casket Builder Supply sells an adjustable bed lift that will raise the body up and back down again. They sell it with a steel frame bed or just the lift on its own. I got just the lift and created my own bed out of 3/4" plywood. The dimensions are 42" x 21". The hole at the top is for your fingers to get the nut onto the bolt that holds the bed to the lift. Below is the lift in the lowered position.

I reinforced the back of the bed with two rows of 3/4" x 1" strips of plywood so it didn't sag when being raised. At the bottom of the bed I added two wheels to allow for easy travel instead of just scraping on the bottom. The small pieces of plywood on the bottom of the casket keep the wheels from traveling side to side so the bed doesn't get caught up on any of the bolts from the swing handles. Fixed casters were from Amazon.

Below is the bed in the raised position -

Casters -

Step 16: Interior Lining

Finishing the interior walls was pretty simple. You want your material to have a nice crisp, straight line for the top edge. To do this I cut out 1" strips of poster board with a rotary cutter and mat.

Your material will go between the poster board and the inside of the casket at the top edge.

You then staple through the poster board and your material and into the inside of the casket.

Your material then folds down over the poster board creating that nice crisp clean edge.

NOTE - Notice the crank at the top of the pic above. You'll need to cut in a slit for the crank to fit through. I nice button hole will do the trick.

Step 17: Exterior Linens

The overlay is the linen that covers part of the right lid and hangs down into the casket to block your view of the lower half of the body.

The valence or endover hangs down from the inside of the casket over the top edge of the left side of the casket. Simply for aesthetic purposes only.

The valence is attached with velcro and the overlay just hangs in place.

Step 18: Head Panel

The head panel measures 34" x 16 1/2". You are left to your own desires as to what you want to put here. I decided on an embroidery of the place where my mother and father were married. I found a design I liked and then found a person on etsy that digitized it into an embroidery. I sent her a piece of the same fabric that was used for the interior (oversized by about 3 inches) so I could wrap it around a pice of hardieboard 1/8" thick.

Congratulations for making it to the end. Now I just have to find a place to store this until it is needed.

I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts in the comments - and if you end up making your own casket, be sure to leave some photos.

An end note - I just purchased the wood for my mother's casket. I couldn't make just one. She has selected cherry wood. I'm thinking about doing a different top for hers. Maybe a nice rounded top. Although that sounds complicated. Is that a challenge?