Box Design 

Box #4

I wanted my box to have some aspects of crate design. Out of the four sides, two sides would be a 12″ x 14.5″ x 0.75″ wall of wood while the other two sides would each have 3 horizontal planks that are 3.5″ x 16″ x 0.75″.

Woodshop: Cutting the wood and routing chamfers

For the planks, I used the radial arm saw to cut a long plank of wood into smaller pieces that were 16″ long. For the larger pieces of wood (the other two non-planked sides and the bottom of the box), I used the table saw. An advantage I saw in the table saw was that I didn’t need to measure out the wood and mark pencil lines because the table saw had a built-in ruler to measure.

After that, I used the router with a chamfer bit to create 45 degree angle on all edges the planks (except for the bottom two planks that needed a flat edge flushed against the bottom of the box). This made the edges less sharp and easier to hold onto.

 

Sanding: 500 grit sandpaper and orbital sander

For the larger pieces of wood, I used the orbital sander. This was helpful because the wood I used that weren’t planks was extremely rough, and the orbital sander was able to remove a lot of material in a small amount of time. The planks required more precision, as I didn’t want to use the orbital sander on the chamfer edges, so I used 500 grit sandpaper.

Staining: I decided to stain the wood first, before assembling. For the exterior of the box, I used walnut colored wood stain. For the interior of the box, I used gray wood stain.

Assembly: Attempting the Kreg jig and drilling

Uneven measurements: As I started assembling the wood pieces, I noticed that the plank lengths were a bit uneven, with one in particular quite shorter than the others. It was still long enough to reach one wall to the opposite wall. The two walls of wood were also at slightly different heights, with one wall being about 1 cm taller. Potential reasons for the discrepancy in the planks could be due to my own inaccurate penciled-in measurement and the difference in the walls could be a discrepancy in the built-in measurement system of the table saw.

Kreg jig: I experimented with the kreg jig to hide the screws when connecting the walls of the wood to the bottom of the box. The kreg jig worked, but the screws did pierce the other side of the wood a little bit, though not very noticable. I tried seeing if I could connect the planks to the wall using the kreg jig also. This was difficult, as some times when I tried drilling the pivot hole, it would stop half-way through the wood as if it was blocked by something. I decided to switch my plan and go to the standard drilling method.

Drilling: Most of the screws were able to embed itself deeper than the wood surface, making the screw heads not protrude outward. However, some screws were not able to go deeper than the wood surface. For those screws, perhaps an unprecise pivot hole prevented the entire screw from embedding into the wood.

Cost analysis:

3/4 in. x 2 ft. x 4 ft wood => 24 in x 48 in = 1152 in^2 wood for $31.58

Total area of wood for my box calculation:  (width of 0.75″ is the same)

6 pieces of (3.5″ x 16″ planks) = 336 in^2

2 pieces of (14.5″ x 12″ wall side) = 348 in^2

1 piece of (16″ x 16″ bottom) = 256 in^2

Total area = 940 in^2

Wood cost = 940 in^2 x ($31.58 / 1152 in^2) = $25.77

28 screws x ($0.08 / 1 screw) = $2.24

Stain = ~8 oz x ($13.57/ 32 oz) = $3.39

Labor: 6 hours x ($15 / 1 hour) = $90

Total cost = $121.40

Final box:

Conclusion:

It was fascinating to experiment with many different techniques–using the table saw, routing, using the kreg jig, sanding, staining–to go from raw wood to a complete, easy-to-carry box that can hold items in it.