I thought making a box would be easy; they’re the most simple shape I can think of. I’ve interacted with over ten of them just to make dinner and package leftovers tonight. Easy, right? I was pretty wrong…

I started my box by asking a lab assistant to help me cut wood. Quick! Easy! That was it for that day. My materials were ready, and I was prepared for another quick work session of easy screwing and sanding. I took a moment to find the screws I wanted to use, and I was pleased by my choice of wood-exterior screws that were a subtle light brown. Pretty! All in a day’s work.

Upon my return to the OEDK for work session #2, I was confident. I grabbed my wood and  proceeded to start screwing the pieces together to form the box shape. I was only one screw deep when a classmate of mine asked what my plan was. Did I intend to stack my wood? I was pretty confused, until he kindly reminded me of the height and length requirements of our boxes. Classmates are definitely the first heroes of this story.

Back to square one. I went upstairs and asked a different lab assistant (Nick! The best, thank you!) to help me cut a NEW piece of wood to better fit the requirements. I chose to cut 7″x7″ square to make a cube. The 1/2 inch thick piece of plywood produced 6 of these squares, and I took them all for good measure (I ultimately ended up needing the extra piece).

Once again, I got my pieces ready to screw together by clamping them to the table on the corner clamps. Our kind TA helped me find appropriate screws (1 inch long) for my thin wood, and I was back in business! Slowly but surely, I started to screw the pieces together. Screw by screw, I got a little better. My holes were better placed, my clamps a little tighter, and my morale improving after starting over again. Throughout the process, I had a few bumps: misplaced holes that needed some carefully angled drilling to fix, splintering a piece of my wood with one of those misplaced holes, struggling to put enough pressure on the drill to do anything, and accidentally stripping screws were among my errors. Fixing these errors definitely composed the bulk of my working time (see below for my strategy on removing a stripped screw).

I finally reached a point where the four sides of my box were assembled.

Now, all I needed was to attach the bottom. This is where the silliest realization of the day occurred: I had a 7″x7″ inch piece of wood left, and my box’s outer dimensions were 7.5″x7.5″ and inner dimensions were 6.5″x6.5″. I went upstairs and asked my buddy Nick to please (PLEASE!) cut off 1/2 inch on each end of my remaining piece of wood.

About ten minutes later, Nick arrived with another lab assistant, also named Nick, and my piece of wood.

I thanked them and went to put the wood in its place on the bottom of my box. Sadly, the measurements must’ve been just slightly off, as it was a millimeters too long in one of the dimensions. I recruited our TA to help me learn how to sand!

I sanded down the side until it fit in the box. It was not a perfect sand, and it left a little gap, but I was pretty proud that it had finally fit. I then went in with wood filler to close the hole.

The next step was routing. Easier said than done, as none of the lab assistants knew how to change the router bit. We spent about an hour trouble-shooting with the manual before we figured it out! Success!

I tested the router bit on my extra square of plywood, then I routed the box.

I found using plywood to be pretty tricky. Taking the router to the edge broke away little chips of the top layer of the wood, but it left a great little decorate ridge (very crown molding…). My last step was to sand it down using the orbital sander, which left me with a finished box!

What was the total cost all in?

The largest cost was definitely labor time: about 5 hours of my time + 2 hours total of lab assistant time (mostly spent trying to swap the router bit) + 30 minutes of TA time helping me with the screwdriver issues.

 

The raw materials for this project were not particularly demanding:

1 piece of 1/2 inch plywood ($15.99 on Amazon, but I believe the OEDK gets wood for less). I didn’t use the full sheet, so the remainder can still be used on another project.

12 phillips head 1-inch screws ($5.99 for a pack of 100 on Amazon, so about 72 cents for the ones I used).

About two globs of wood filler from a 3.25 ounce tube. The tube costs $4.88 on Amazon, but my guess is what I used amounted to cents.

 

As for the machine time, I based my numbers off of how much it would cost if I were to rent the tools for the amount of time I used them. If you search “power tool rental Houston,” Home Depot pops up first.

I used the drill for about 2 hours, but at times I had 3 drills going to save time changing bits. So let’s say 3 drills/2 hours. At $13 for four hours of rental, my cost was $19.50.

I used the orbital router for 15 minutes. At $11 for four hours of rental, my cost was about 69 cents.

I also used the router for about a half hour, but Home Depot does not allow the rental of that tool. Given how little time I spent with the machine on, I assume the cost breaks down to cents.

 

When evaluating the time investment, machine costs, and raw material costs, I am very glad that I can buy boxes at the store!