Happy Halloween everybody....as you may know I live as well as work at a large historic cemetery in Chicago. I am an apprentice funeral director as well. Eventually once I'm licensed my mentor and I will be buying a larger funeral home and if possible I would like to incorporate a work shop for building handmade wood caskets..as well as a small greenhouse but that's another thread later on. So my question is, has anyone ever built a casket? One used for a funeral, not just a Halloween prop. I know the very basics of wood working but I do enjoy doing it and I know I could employ a few friends who enjoy wood working and are on hard times now. Any specialty tools? I believe alot of the wood caskets I see are dovetailed together maybe? Any body's tips or ideas on this whole idea would be greatly appreciated
The grave digger
My BIL is going to build his own and I downloaded the info from Rockler also. To me caskets are overrated as far as pricing goes. And I think the cost of funerals are driving more and more to go with Cremations. Plus the fact that a lot of Cemeteries are running out of room. Our local Cemetery just opened up another section and IIRC, they said it will take care of something like 11,000, plus they built a Mausoleum that will take care of something like 500.
As far as living at a Cemetery and taking care of it, my hat's off to you sir. Our local one has a house sitting empty and a rather nice looking house although older. Maybe built in the very early 1900's. I've often told my wife that if I were single, or even married, but renting, I would look into it. A lot of people that I mention it to say that there is no way in hell that they would want to live by a cemetery, let alone IN a cemetery. I find cemeteries unique and peaceful. Our has one large driveway that goes around the outer perimeter, then of course, offshoot drives from that. On any day, winter or summer, you will see cars sitting in the driveway where ones go to eat their lunch at noon and relax before going back to work. On nice days, there is no less than a dozen people at a time using the outer drive as a walking track. There is no problem with vandalism that I can remember, and it backs up to a housing development.
I was born and raised in a town maybe 20 miles from where I live now, my wife was born and raised maybe 15 miles from where we live now. My mom and dad got buried in between where they both lived and my dad actually had two family plots where his parents and brothers are buried, but mom wanted nothing to do with his family. Our local one is maybe 1 1/2 miles from where we now live and we've both decided that since we have spent the better half of our working here, we may as well be buried here too.
A lot of times when we are out just taking a drive, we will go through the local cemeteries to see the unique headstones and to see the names on the headstones. My last name is not a real common name and has been spelled a few ways through the years, but I have saw my last name on a lot of stones around. I just wish I knew more about my dads side of the family than what I do, but growing up, my mom always said they were worthless alcoholics. Why the **** my mom and dad ever got married in the first place is beyond me. I have been in contact with some of my dads relation though and we are planning a get together to discuss what my past relatives are actually like. Come to find out they were the opposite of worthless alcoholics, but some were College Professors, teachers, and a couple of lawyers.
Digger.....I hope when you get through your apprenticeship that you can fullfill what your plans are now.
