These Wood Outdoor Solar Lanterns are SO easy to Build + FREE PLANS!

SOLAR LANTERN FREE BUILD PLANS: https://guardianwoodworking.com/solar-outdoor-lantern/

I know many of us are looking for ways to profit off of our projects and these wood outdoor solar lanterns are SO easy to build. These DIY outdoor lanterns are perfect for quick builds and are a great beginner woodworking project. They also make an excellent addition to any deck, patio or garden space! I hope you enjoy this build video. Be sure to like, subscribe and share!

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👇Links to tools and supplies:
Frosted Plexi Glass: https://tinyurl.com/bdzbmyjj
Solar Light: https://amzn.to/3SYmIcZ
Silicone Sealant: https://amzn.to/441lVOq

Website: guardianwoodworking.com
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this video is sponsored by build.io oh hey see back in the day I didn’t have solar lanterns so I lit my porch with fireflies and hope but now now I harness the power of a star 93 million miles away because I’m tired of chasing fireflies in my backyard this here is a solar outdoor lantern there’s free plans in the description below i built this lantern with about $35 worth of materials is perfect to sell make a profit or just adds a great addition to your front porch so now let’s go ahead and start building this [Music] thing so for this build I am using a 1×12 piece of cedar this is left over from another project actually the swing bench that I made uh in a previous video the widest part of the lantern is going to be 8 1/2 in so if you get a 1×10 cedar board you’ll be just fine i wanted to mill mine down to 5/8 of an inch but you definitely don’t have to do this after I got it through the planer I took it over to my miter saw where I started to make my initial cuts i don’t know about you guys but when I’m building I don’t like making all of the cuts at the beginning and then piecing it all together i like to cut a lot of the pieces as I go so that if I make mistakes or if I just want to change something up I can adjust the measurements and make different cuts so I start here by cutting the bottom plate the lid the lid cap and then the plank i’m going to rip down for the pillars of the lantern now I’m going to head over to the table saw get it set up to cut these boards correctly set the fence right at 8 1/2 in and we’re going to finish cutting the bottom plate the lid and the lid cap i’m going to cut the lid cap right at 7 in the lid cap is basically just a piece I’m going to put on top uh just to make it look a little bit more decorative and then after that’s cut I’m going to adjust the fence to an inch and a quarter and rip four pieces at this size for the pillars of the lantern once I get the pillars cut I know I want to space them out exactly at 7 in to the widest point and since I know that cap decorative piece is a 7in square going to line the pillars up on that and then take a measurement from the inside to inside of those pieces so I have the measurements for the window frames i’m going to need four short window frame pieces at 4 and 1/2 in and four window frame pieces at 5 and 1/2 in once I get all those cut up it was time to start cutting the pieces for the window grids i love using SketchUp especially on my phone in the shop this is completely not sponsored i just want to share something that has really helped my building with you guys i design all of my projects in SketchUp before I start building this saves a ton of time and a lot of wood and money because I’m not making mistakes on cuts or not making as many mistakes on cuts I should say i can design everything in real life measurements make sure it all fits together and then as I’m building basically just use the tape measure tool inside of SketchUp and know exactly how long I need to cut all of my pieces and just to make it a little more decorative I decided to trim the window grid pieces from 5/8 of an inch down to/ an inch thick okay so this may look like a lot of random pieces uh but there is a method to this madness so right here we have the base plate and the top plate and this will be the top decorative piece sits on top i don’t know what they’re called what would you call these the pillars we’ll call these the pillars we have our trim pieces for the bottom on the short sides we have the trim pieces for the long side then we have all these window pieces together and they’re going to go just like that i wanted to do half flaps we’re basically going to cut 1/4 of an inch here and here 1/4 of an inch on this piece and this piece and they should fit just like that so I’m going to pull out my little crosscut sled use a table saw here and get all these half flaps cut put them together and then uh we’ll start tacking everything in so now it was time to make all the marks for the half flaps I was going to cut with the table saw i just took my mini combo square here i have all the exact measurements in the plans in the description below so you can check those out if you’re building this along with the video but I did my best to line them all up mark them uniformly so that everything was square and it was going to look very symmetrical when it was inside of the lantern and because if you’re going to build something you might as well build it pretty once I got everything marked up and I was happy with all of the measurements I took it over to the table saw made sure the table saw blade was sticking up quarter inch above the crosscut sled that I was using and then proceeded to make all of these tedious little cuts back and forth and back and forth and back and forth i did use some blue tape in a few of these shots just to help with some of the tear out on the back but I realized that most of this was going to be covered up since it was a half flap joint so to speed up the process I skipped the tape and just uh moved on got a little too close to the blade for comfort on the short uh cross grid pieces so I used a clamp to make the initial cuts then just use a chisel to knock out the rest after that I did a quick dry fit to make sure everything was fitting correctly before getting out the Titebond 3 wood glue and starting to glue them all together after getting them all glued together and making sure there was no glue on the outside I just stacked them all together and used a couple quick clamps to hold them overnight let them dry and then in the morning come back take them out they should be good to go and guess what they were they were good to go so this is pretty special here you guys are watching me for the first time ever use a FES tool sander i like a lot of people probably went through the same phases of I don’t need a fest tool i can get by with my cheap little palm sander my goodness this thing was worth every penny i got a great deal on it it was on Facebook Marketplace it was only used once so went ahead and snatched it everything with 120 grit sandpaper smoothed everything out it’s going to be a lot easier to do this before I assembled everything with the glue and nails and speaking of glue and nails I’m using a variety of one 1 and a/4 and 2in brad nails 18 gauge brad nails I should say that along with Titebond 3 wood glue to assemble this whole thing i did mess up when I was cutting the long vertical grid pieces for the windows so I had to go back and trim those up don’t worry I corrected those in the plans and then depending on how far I needed the nail to go through the wood I just picked the appropriate length nail for whatever I was nailing in so everything’s pretty self-explanatory here just using those window trim pieces for the top and bottom on the appropriate sides as I’m showing here and then just tacking the window grids inside of those again using the appropriate size window grids for the right side of the lantern once I got the two sides with the 5 and 1/2 in uh grids and window trim pieces I flipped them over and then tacked in the 4 and 1/2 grid pieces and window trim using the assistance of a little clamp here to hold in the grid as I was using the brad nailer to tack them in after that I took the base plate for the lantern marked in 3/4 of an inch on all sides that way I had something to reference when I was centering the lantern cage here flipped it over on the bottom then used some 1-in nails to tack it in place with some wood glue and look at that it’s starting to finally look like a lantern so for the solar lights I’m using these i’ll put a link in the description of the exact uh model I use they were pretty cheap it was I think eight or nine bucks for two of these lights and seem to have pretty good reviews on them and I measured the exact diameter of these lights before I started drilling the holes in the top plate and the decorative plate but then looking around the shop I realized that I had some uh camo duct tape laying around and the inside looked like it was the same diameter as the light so I did what any good woodworker would do and put the light inside the duct tape and it was actually perfect so I used the inside of the duct tape roll to mark on the top plate and the decorative plate what I needed to cut out to cut this out I just used a drill bit big enough where I could fit my jigsaw blade in then just use my jigsaw to cut a circle on both plates kind of had to keep trimming it up until I got the light to fit in i didn’t want the light to be loose at all so I took my time here and after that I just took my trim router with a 1/8 inch round over bit and went around all the edges on the bottom plate the top plate and that decorative plate now I took some glue some 1-in brad nails tacked the decorative piece on top of the lantern lid making sure it was nice and center i did drive the nails up through the bottom so that you couldn’t see the nail holes from the top and then with the assistance of my beautiful daughter we took some wood filler and just filled all the holes in around the lantern and while I was waiting for that to dry I just took some 120 grit sandpaper and just softened up the edges on the inner grids and anywhere else that was a little rough still so for this next step I’m using some frosted plexiglass I bought from Home Depot down the street i measured the inside of the lantern to make sure I was getting the exact width that I needed i also switched out the saw blade on my table saw to a 60 to blade when cutting plexiglass you want a higher tooth count and a finer cutting blade if possible just going to borrow these from Manny for a quick second sorry there bud after that I proceeded to make sure all of the glass was fitting inside of the lantern properly to get the glass cut to the correct height I took it over and just cut it on my miter saw i already had a higher tooth blade installed so luckily that sped up this process had to make a few minor adjustments i took my time cuz I didn’t want there to be any gaps and once I knew all the plexiglass was fitting right I pulled out the sander again and just used 120 grit sandpaper over the whole thing again smoothing out all of those spots that we covered with wood filler to fill those nail holes and I was informed by my wife passing by that she was hoping that I would paint the cage of the lantern a black color leaving the bottom and top plate the wood so I thought this was a great idea so I said yes of course and grab some of this bare wood deck stain that I had laying around the shop from a previous build i always love using leftover materials for current builds it makes me so happy and then again with the help of my beautiful daughter we painted the cage of the lantern this nice beautiful black color peeled off the tape and it was looking pretty crispy if I do say so myself so to add a little richer color and to give it a little more protection all of the bare cedar wood I just took a rag with some teak oil and rubbed everything down i then took some denatured alcohol cleaned out the inside of the lantern that all of the plexiglass was going to adhere to then took just some clear silicone uh glass sealant it said it was able to stick to pretty much any surface including wood and plexiglass and you guessed it just ran some beads of silicone down all the places the plexiglass was going to make contact with put the correct glass pieces in and voila that’s French for we did it but hold up we’re not done quite yet this thing needed some legs so just drawing a little design here about 2 in on top 1 in on bottom cut a strip out of the remaining wood I had laying around cut four of these little shapes out used some glue a couple one and a/4in brad nails per leg and tacked them on i also used 120 grit sandpaper to smooth them out and coated the whole bottom with teak oil for some added protection i almost forgot but I added a couple by a couple I mean four drainage holes in the bottom just in case any you know moisture or water gets in it has somewhere to go and let this thing breathe a little bit after that using some glue I made sure that the lid pieces were centered with the lantern and then using some 2-in brad nails carefully centered them over the edges of the cage and drove in a few on top after that I went to put the light in but the lid was still a little bit out of line and not big enough not as big as the hole on the uh decorative plate so I had to take a flush trim bit on my uh trim router just went around the inside real quick not too big of a deal and then trying again I got that light to slide in just right thanks guys for watching i’ll be sure to put a link to everything I built this lantern with in the description below uh check out Buildy check out the Guardians Guild and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss other uh free plans that I put out on this channel so until next time guys go build something cool this thing’s not even lit