A DIY Coffin for the Dummy Corpse

Homemade casket

In case you weren't aware of it, there is no legal requirement that you buy a coffin from a funeral home. In fact, you don't even have to have a coffin in most jurisdictions. So it should come as no surprise that someone, somewhere, googled "How to Build Your Own Pine Box Casket"¹ nor should it be surprising that eHow.com scraped that query and turned it over to one of their contributors to "answer." That worthy is R. L. Cultrona (Rhianna), and her post now appears at OurPastimes.com... as if funerals were a "pastime."

We were a bit taken aback at the notion that a film-school grad would be compiling carpentry instructions, and even more concerned when we noticed that the sole reference Cultrona offered was for a Halloween decoration. Oops. Another "oops" moment crops up in R. L.'s introductory paragraph, when she explains that,

"Since caskets are generally expensive, this might also be a nice way for the family of the diseased [sic] to save some money."

That alone is enough for Cultrona to merit a DotD nomination, but it isn't her only foul-up. There are many others, mostly a result of her failure to understand that the plans aren't for a burial casket, but for a decoration. She was also hindered by her apparent unfamiliarity with carpentry in general, such as her instruction to use "pine boards" for the casket, including a "board" long and wide enough to draw a 34" x 75½" rectangle. We note that the plans from which Rhianna cribbed call for the use of plywood, but she never mentions that detail.

The remainder of the plans are, for the most part, accurately copied-reworded-pasted. She does have some problems with the depth of her casket, though, as evidenced by,

"Cut the wood for the sides. Use one of the other pieces of pine and cut one 17-inch-long piece, one 24-inch piece, two 59-inch pieces and two 18-inch pieces."

It might have been useful to specify the width of those "pieces," R. L... in case you didn't notice, they're supposed to be slightly less than 12 inches wide. She goes on to (attempt to) explain the necessity of mitering the ends of the boards in the sides, saying that,

"The 24-inch piece will have edges at 53 degrees. The two 18-inch pieces will have one edge which is 76 degrees and one edge which is 53 degrees..."

In our humble opinion, the edges of all pieces are square, and it is the ends that are mitered. Who knows, though. Finally, for assembling this "coffin," R. L. says to,

"Nail the sides to the bottom."

Her materials list was omitted when the post was ported from eHow to OurPastimes, but according to the Wayback Machine at archive.org, it included "finishing nails." We submit that the casket would be rather flimsy, especially since Cultrona neglected to say to nail the sides together. In fact, the original plans called for screws, glue, and biscuits. And finally, R. L. includes this warning:

"Make sure you use small enough nails that they don't come out the other side. If you do have a nail poke through, saw it off so your sides are all smooth."

Yeah, right: the "diseased" is gonna care if a nail pokes through!
Combine our nominee's ignorance of even basic carpentry with the clueless notion that these plans are for a pine box to be used in an actual burial, and it should be no surprise at all that Cultrona is picking up her first Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_5510483_build-own-pine-box-casket.html

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DDIY - CARPENTRY