To start out for this project, I sort of had a plan. Well, at least something like almost 50% of one. Which I now realize is not, in fact, a plan, but rather a partial idea.

So the partial idea was that I wanted two birch planks near the top of the box so it was easy to carry, and that I wanted the bottom half of the box to not have holes, so small objects wouldn’t fall out easily.

     

I started with the bottom. About two hours after I started with the bottom, I read the part of the instructions that said to do the bottom last. About two hours after that, I realized why. But anyways, I wanted the bottom to be smooth, so I took a piece of plywood, measured it, cut it on the table saw, used the jointer to make sure all the edges were level, and then used the router to create fillets on all four sides. When the router was going against the grain, a little bit of the bottom layer of the plywood broke off at two of the corners, which was disappointing, but it wasn’t enough to affect the structural integrity of the box.

After I finished the bottom, I decided to use two pieces of plywood to form the bottom part of two of the sides of the box. I clamped the first side and the bottom together (see first image), drilled pilot holes, and used a torque drill (a wonderful device, truly) to drive three screws through the bottom into the side. The first screw went into a chipped-off corner, which was difficult (I had to first go through another piece of wood to get the hole in the right place) but eventually moderately successful. The second went a little too deep (see second image). As time went on, I got better at this, and attached the second side without much difficulty.

     

Then I decided that for the other two sides, I would use two birch planks without leaving a gap to get to nearly the same height. So, I cut four birch planks and screwed them to the two existing sides, leaving no gap at the bottom. I had an issue with wood splitting with one of the long screws (see first image below), so I removed it and replaced it with a shorter screw (see comparison in second image below). The shorter one is not functional, but it fills in the hole, and I was already using more screws than I needed to.

   

At this point I had the bottom half (or really closer to two thirds) of the box done. I decided that I much prefer the look of the birch planks as opposed to the plywood, so I chose to add another birch plank to all four sides. I added a square rod of wood on the inside of each corner so that there would be something to screw the planks into. I really like the aesthetics of the sharp corners on the birch ply, so I only used the router in four places–– to add small chamfers to both bottom edges of two of the planks, so they could serve as comfortable handles for holding the box rather than cutting into a user’s hands.

Then, it was time to add my final four planks. I used some scrap wood to lie across the inner rods of the box so that I could attach the planks at the right distance and remove them to have an evenly-spaced slot:

   

By this point in the process, the bin outside the machine shop was out of long enough screws. So I was going through the white bucket of miscellaneous screws, trying to find anything that would work. The final product includes many mismatching screws, which looks a little silly. To put it nicely, my box has character! Here it is, fully assembled:

Now it was time for some post-processing! I brought it into the OEDK and sanded it. I considered using the orbital sander, but because of my small internal pieces and tiny gaps, I decided to just use sandpaper and do it all by hand. The birch planks were already very smooth, so most of my effort went into getting the plywood up to standard. Then, I looked into wood stain. I knew I wanted to keep the original color, so I tested all the stains I could find and went with the one that looked the least different. It was labelled as white, but didn’t seem to lighten the wood at all. I had opened a new container, and by the time I was done coating the entire box inside and out, I had used almost all of it!

Aside from the misaligned screws, I’m pretty satisfied with the final result. If I were to do this again, though, I would skip the plywood altogether and build the whole box using birch planks!

 

Cost:

• Used scrap wood for the internal supports, and dug through the white bucket for screws, so that cost is negligible
• 8 birch planks (at ~$1.17 per foot): $9.36
• 1 16″x16″ piece of plywood (at ~$20 per 2’x2′ piece): ~$11.11 (by area)
• About 23 inches of a 2×4 wood plank for the pegs: about $4 for 96 inches = $0.96
• About 6 oz of stain (at ~$14 per 32 oz): $2.63
• About 8 hours of labor (assuming OEDK lab assistant wage of $11/hour): $88

Total cost: ~$112.06