Build An Artist Easel Plan

This artist easel can be used for both outdoor painting or for displaying artwork in the living room. It can be folded away easily in a cupboard, and will fit into a car to transport to your favourite painting location. The steps for making this free woodworking artists easel project plan from Emporium Indonesia are as follows.

1. First, cut the wood for the easel into 5 lengths: 2 @ 1.6m,1 @ 1.3m,1 @ 0.7m,1 @ 0.4m.

2. Cut the dowel to 2 x 200mm lengths. Plane one edge of the bottom rail (0.7m) at a slight angle. This ensures that when the easel is in the open position, the piece of skirting board (paint holder tray) remains in a horizontal position.

3. Place the longer lengths of wood (1.6m) directly on top of each other, clamp down, and using the spade bit, drill the 3 positions for the dowel. Drill about half way through. The first dowel position is located 900mm from one end, the second 150mm from that and finally another 150mm down for the third one.

4. Place the two longest lengths on your woodworking bench and space the bottom ends apart by 600mm and the top ends by 120mm. Pre-drill, glue and screw the 0.7m rail 750mm up from the bottom. Carefully turn the frame over and screw the 0.4m rail 210mm down from the top. (Each rail should be on opposite sides of the legs).

5. Then glue and screw the skirting board to the top of the bottom rail. Next, using a hinge, attach the back leg to the top rail making sure it is centred on the rail.

6 Using the 18mm spade bit, drill a hole through the middle of the bottom rail and back leg and then attach a length of rope with knots at either end. This will stop the back leg sticking out too far when standing.

7. Now stand the artist easel up. Use any old piece of wood to scribe around the bottom and cut to a line so that the two front legs sit flat on the floor rather than on the leg edges.

8. Finally, sand the easel down again and apply furniture finishing as required.

Woodworking Project Plan Materials:

Radiata pine: 6m @ 70mm x 30mm Doweling: 0.4m @ 18mm diameter Sash cord: 1 x 1m Skirting board: 1 x 0.8m Brass hinge

Artist Easel Woodworking Project Tools

Drill: 18mm spade and screw bit Saw Glue (PVA) Tape measure Pencil and ruler Sandpaper (fine) G-clamp