For the first box making assignment, I made a 7.75’’ X 7.75’’ X 7’’ open box out of 0.75’’ thick treated wood (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Preview of Completed Box
My initial idea for my box was to cut the wood at 45° angles (Figure 2) and have the ends meet at the corners. However, I came across some difficulties with that approach. First, I did not adequately plan the dimensions of each side to account for the angled cut and ended up with different sized pieces. Secondly, I accidentally cut one of the pieces to have the cross section of a parallelogram instead of a trapezoid. I tried to reuse the piece and adjust the dimensions but that idea just led to more unevenly sized pieces. After realizing that it was not worth it to salvage a box out of my original material, I decided to take what I had learned in and start over.
Figure 2. Cross Section of First Approach
For my second approach, I decided not to cut the wood at 45° angles but rather cut two of the sides shorter and put them between the two longer sides. By this time I was an expert at the table saw and it took me very little time to cut the wood.
After I had my pieces, I went downstairs to assemble the box. This part had additional challenges including finding a correct drill bit and screw pair and realizing the drill was going in the wrong direction. I used the large clamps and corner clamps to hold the pieces of wood in place, first connecting the sides (Figure 3) then attaching the bottom.
Figure 3. Sides of Box Assembled
I finally had an assembled box. However, I realized that the bottom piece I attached last had about a ¼ inch of extra material on one of the sides of the box. To fix this, I unscrewed the bottom piece (with the drill spinning in the right direction) and used the planar in the wood shop to shave off the extra material. Then, I reattached the bottom piece and had a fully assembled open box, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Side (left), Bottom (middle), and Isometric (right) View of Final Box
To improve the appearance of my box, I hand sanded all 5 sides. This greatly improved the smoothness of the box and removed small protruding pieces of wood. Then, I used the router to round out the edges on the bottom face of the box. I decided not to round the vertical and top edges because I liked how the sharp edges looked.
If I were to sell this box, I would probably sell it as a wooden plantar since I made it out of treated wood and it has a rustic aesthetic. The cost of the raw materials include $3 for 40’’ of 2’’ X 8’’ wood and $1 for 12 screws from Home Depot. It took me 4 hours to make this but I would subtract one hour for errors that I made from lack of experience. So working at $12 per hour, the cost of labor would be $36. The total cost would be $40.
