Trash Can from a Moving Box

One Man's trash is piling up

I was cleaning up the shop getting ready to start my next project, a mission style display case, and I had been using a moving box as a trash can. The problem was that it was over-flowing and there wasn't an easy way to get its contents into trash bags. I had to sit there and hand transfer everything into two large trash bags. I don't want to have to do that again, so I made a top for the box so I can fix a trash bag to a wooden hoop that is slightly larger than the hole in the top. I used scrap wood for the lid, and cut a 1/8 strip of wood off a 3/4" x 7" x 60" piece of oak left over from the bed slats. I just formed a loop with the strip and glued the ends together with some twine wrapped around a few times for good measure. Works like a charm.

 

This shows the design and what it looks like with a trash bag installed.

I didn't have a 22" square piece of plywood lying around, but I had a piece I could cut 4, 11-inch squares from. I gang cut the 8" radius arc in all of them at once on the band saw.  I screwed them to the lap-jointed rectangle I had screwed together earlier. I then just had to cut the 1/8" strip of oak and make the loop. I attached a garbage bag by sticking the bag down through the loop and lid hole, and tucking the top of the bag over the loop and down into the lid hole again. The weight of the stuff in the bag helps pull the loop against the lid, securing the bag. 

I spent the next twenty minutes sweeping up around the shop and testing it out. 

It will be a lot easier the next time it gets full.