This assignment was a great arm workout!!! Drilling the screws into the wood and carrying the box around once it was all assembled helped with my weekly arm workout!!
1. PLANNING AND WOOD SELECTION:
First step was to decide how my box would look. I did a 2D drawing of it with the respective measurements as well, Figure 1.
Figure 1: Initial 2D drawing of how the box was going to be like
Then I went to the woodshop to select the wood that I wanted. I cut some wood using the different saws (table and circular saw).
- I use the already cut wood plywood of 16×16” for the base of the box and around 1/2” thickness.
- For two of the sides I used a thinner type of plywood (around 1/8” thickness).
- Then, I cut the remaining 6 pieces of wood according to my initial drawing using solid wood. After cutting these pieces and simulating the assembling of my box I realized that I didn’t fully liked it and decided to cut them in half with the table saw to make them thinner. Therefore I cut two more pieces of wood to have 4 rods on each side rather than just 3, Figure 2.
Figure 2: The wood all cut
2. PLANER & ROUTER:
After cutting the wood I used the planner and the router. With the planner I had a little issue: I planned the wood way too much that had to cut more wood as I made it really thin. Cutting 2 more pieces turned out to be a great idea because as I was using the left out wood two of them were a bit curved and it would have been difficult to use it as a rod for my box.
Once all my pieces were really cut, I used the round over effect for the rods. I did it on top and button sides for 4 of the rods to give them a smoother look. Two of the 4 remaining only have this effect on the top as they were going to be the bottom rods; and for the two remaining I used another router effect for the upper part, while keeping the round over effect for the bottom part.
After using these machines, I used the rounded sander (120) from downstairs to sand the plywood. This was a very tough process as I couldn’t manage to make the sides look perfectly smooth, but at least if you were not able to get splinters when grabbing the wood which was a great step forward. And the manual paper sander (600) to sand the 4 rods of the crate.
3. BUILDING THE BOX PART I (drill and jigsaw):
After sanding, I used a machine from the -1 floor of the ODEK to drill a hole to the sides of my box. Next, I clamped my wood to the table and used the jigsaw to make that hole bigger and have enough room to sand it afterwards. Last, I used the Jet Bench Oscillating Sander from downstairs, to make the handles of my box smoother and rounded, Figure 3. Now I had all the pieces ready to be assembled; or at least that is what I thought :’D.
Figure 3: Process of making the handles
4. BUILDING THE BOX PART II (with screws):
I started planning which would be the steps I would be following when assembling the box. I didn’t know if starting with the bottom part and then the sides or how. After figuring it out I decided that as the sides of my wood were made of plywood, I couldn’t insert a screw horizontally to it, that it had to be perpendicular. This led me to restructure the shape of my box and therefore the dimensions changed a little bit. After giving new dimensions to my box I went to the woodshop and cut about one inch of the base of the box. My new dimensions were going to be 16.5×14.5″ and still 12” high. Now I was ready to start assembling the box.
I started with the base as it would be giving support to my box. First, I screwed the two rods on the sides and the two sides with the handles. I also used some glue in some parts to reinforce the structure. The process to insert a screw was the following: first I drilled a hole, then I used the countersink to make enough room for the screw to go in, and last, I placed the screw in the hole and drilled in. It was a very iterative process in which I was making both sides at the same time to assure that they were even.
Also, when making the spacing between the rods I used three pieces of wood that helped me to make both sides even. This way I was able to drill the hole easier and assure that the rods were going to be straight Figure 4 (a, b, c, d).
Figure 4 (a, b, c. d) : Process of assembling the box
5. SANDING AND ROUTING THE BOTTOM:
Once the box was fully built, I sanded the top corners removing the picks and making them rounded. I also sanded a little bit more the edges of the box where plywood was present. This wood presents some cracks that can lead to think that it is not sanded, but it actually is.
Additionally, I went to the woodshop to router the bottom part a little bit. During this step I needed to be really careful as I wanted a very slight rounding due to how close the screws were placed to the bottom. The final box prior to be stained is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Box before being stained
6. PAINTING/STAINING:
After finishing sanding I decided to stain my box with the dark walnut stain. During this process I totally forgot that you had to remove the stain almost right after you apply it, and thought that you could leave it for 1 hour and then remove it. But I was wrong and the box got so sticky. To solve it I barely sand it after staging it with the rounder sander of 800. Then I applied one more coat of stain and removed it almost right away. Last, I hand sanded with 600 some of the rods that still were not smooth, Figure 6.
Figure 6: Final box
This was a big mistake but the good part of it is that I’m not going to do it again. 🙂
7. COST ESTIMATES:
If I don’t take into account the cost of all the machines that I used the estimated cost for this box can be divided into:
- Hours of labor: 6hx20 = $120
- Wood:
- Screws (x20): $10
- Glue: $3
- Stain: $10
- Final cost:
- Total cost considering the labor hours = $181
- Total cost without the labor hours and only counting the screws that I used = $52
Besides being a time consuming process I had a lot of fun building this box as it reminded me of when I was little and helped my dad to assemble my bed.
