A new mailbox post

Our mailbox was very, very old, and the post was starting to rot out of the ground, so a couple weeks ago I started making a replacement for it. This turned out to be good timing, because as I was just finishing up the new post the old one toppled. So, our mailbox was grounded for a weekend, but it rose again better than ever before.

My inspiration for the new post was timber frame style joinery. My goal was to make it with beefy mortise and tenon joints that were held together with contrasting dowels, and I think it worked out very well. The whole thing is all hand cut joinery with no glue or fasteners, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out.

The reason I started making this project in the way I did was because I was watching the Tally Ho project on YouTube, which is a shipwright who was restoring a classic sailing yacht to its former glory, and I watched some of the humongous, boat sized joinery that they were doing to make the keel, the frames, and the decking, and it looked like so much fun, so I was looking for an excuse to try some big joinery myself when our mailbox post started failing. I chose cedar for the post because it’s rot resistant and gorgeous, but more importantly, it’s available at Home Depot, and they cut it for you in the store so you can fit it in your car.

I wanted the post to last ages, so I specifically made it very long so I could bury the bottom two feet into the ground, and I coated those two feet with a thick layer of epoxy to keep water from leeching into the part I can’t re-finish. The rest is coated in a water based spar urethane that says it’s UV and water resistant and is meant for outdoor applications.

Despite a few flaws that only I will ever notice, this project came out absolutely perfect, and one of my next projects will be a fitting mailbox to adorn it. For now though, I just stuck the old one back on top so I could get the project done in time for the mail to come.