Here at DIY blurbs, I have been on a mission to help you find the best FREE plans for your woodworking enjoyment. For some projects, this really is not easy! Today I want to help you find some fine woodworking plans that are for a cremation urn (and are hopefully free!). Here’s to hoping that I can come up with something worthwhile!!
These wooden urns are used in the cremation process to hold the ashes of loved ones (essentially a fancy wooden box). For families that don’t want a traditional burial with a casket, these urns play an important role in respecting their loved one. A funeral home may provide the urn or you can provide it yourself.
They are available in a range of styles and prices depending on the material. Many families prefer to have something tangible to keep their loved ones close, and these urns are simply great for this. And, best of all, if you make it yourself you can make it exactly how your loves one would want it! I personally like these types of cremation urns, as they feel more environmentally friendly than some of the other options out there. That and I love anything to do with woodworking.
So, with the formalities out of the way, routers and glue at the ready :)Let’s get on with the woodworking plan search!!
Internet Based Cremation Urn Fine Woodworking Plans
Going into this project I thought it would be something rather niche and hard to find a good plan for! How wrong could I have been? I found three pretty high quality plans right off the bat thanks to our friends over at Google 🙂
My favorite one was part of a ‘BUILD A CREMATION CASK’ article over at the Woodworkers Guild of America (with a name like that, would you expect anything less?).
The plan is in full and comes with detailed photos showing each stage and what you should expect to see. Following this plan would get you a simple but elegant wooden cremation urn, no doubt. And this article even goes into the volume calculations you would need to make to get the correct size, as well as talking about the different materials you could use. This woodworking plan really does include everything you would need!!
Click the image to view this plan for yourself over at the Woodworkers Guild of america website.
Look at that, an awesome plan right out of the gates! Now onto the next one. Although the Woodworking Corner website looks outdated and almost dead and buried (I mean it doesn’t even have an SSL certificate at the time of writing). The upside is that it does have a pretty solid free wooden cremation urn woodworking plan.
Although it is not as thorough as the first plan I showed you, this one does have some excellent diagrams that show the different pieces of the urn and their dimensions. This is pretty valuable to any woodworker, I can tell you. Just to let you know that this one is specifically made for use with pets that have passed away, but I don’t see any reason it can’t be repurposed for use with people.
To view this plan, simply click the image below:
Last but not least I bring to you a woodworking plan from the people over at Fine Woodworking. There is a lot of interesting information in there, including detailing out some essential woodworking skills you will need to practice! The reason that this is the last of my three recommended free plans is because of the fact that this plan has turned into a bit of a wall of text with just a few images, with no useful diagrams like the other plans. Fine Woodworking clearly aren’t fine at writing good blog posts or woodworking plans!! Having said all of that, it is still worth a read.
You know the drill, click the image to view the plan over at the less than fine site of Fine Woodworking:
YouTube Based Cremation Urn Woodworking Plans
If you are more of the visual learner type you may like watching real people make real cremation urns live. This can be achieved by watching some of the many YouTube videos available where people have you walked you through this very thing. The downside here is that they usually aren’t accompanied with actual physical plans, you often have to simply watch and follow along. I suppose these could work more as research to supplement what you learn from the physical plans mentioned above.
Top of the list for video based plans in the one below by Shara Woodshop Diaries. Not only does she walk you through exactly how she made her wooden cremation urns but also links out to a pretty extension web based plan you can follow along with. This is probably the best I have seen during my research and really should be the first stop for anyone wanting to complete a cremation urn project. And Shara clearly knows her stuff as there are some excellent techniques on show here!
Other notable mentions can be found below. Although these are not quite on the same level as Shara’s effort, you can still learn a lot from watching them.
So there you have it, no more scrambling around to find cremation urn plans, I have done the scrambling for you!!
If you often find yourself scrambling for various woodworking plans, I would highly recommend a pack of plans that you can buy for essentially a nominal price. I like buying plans in bulk as it saves me a lot of time and …. TIME IS MONEY! Anyway, you can check out this pack of plans over at their official website.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size container is needed for cremation ashes?
CANA (The Cremation Association of North America) has created a standard urn size that is 200 cubic inches. However, slightly larger and smaller urns are available and typically range from 175 to 300 cubic inches. Generally, one cubic inch of space is reserved for each pound of your body weight after death. If in doubt, ask your funeral house for more details (to be on the safe side).
What are the dimensions of a wooden urn?
Urns come in two different forms: vase-shaped and box-shaped. Vase-shaped urns are usually the taller, more elegant urns. They will be 6-9 inches wide at the bottom, but might become much wider toward the top. Box-shaped urns are larger and not as elegant. They will be 10-12 inches wide on one side, 6-9 inches on another, and may or may not have curved edges.
What is the best material for a wooden cremation urn?
This is a matter of personal preference, but I like using maple or walnut in my woodworking projects. In this case, I would choose a material that your family members would like.