This is the first course project I’ve done and it is quite fun, although it takes way longer than I expected.

I planned to work on my own crate and challenged myself a little bit by choosing the intermediate level. First, I measured out the dimensions of the wood that I needed to build a crate. Then, I cut them out inside the wood shop. Since the wood I picked is quite decent in quality and has a uniform thickness, I decided not to use the planar.

After that, I decided to process my wood a little bit. I chose two different bits for the router. I routed the nine bottom and side planks with a straight one and the front, back, and pillars with a round one. The result is satisfying. However, I noticed there were a lot of splints on the surface of the wood. Also, the connection part of the routed pattern to the main part of the plank has a bump. So I decided to sand my wood to make a smooth surface for further processing.

I first sand it with 160-grade sandpaper on the powered sander to sand down all the noticeable unevenness. After that, I use 280-grade sandpaper to make sure the surface of the wood is REALLY smooth.

Wishing my crate could have a handy handle with it, I picked two pieces of wood, marked the handle part out, and cut out the handle pieces using the bandsaw.

After sanding the cuts to make sure all surfaces were smooth, I decided to proceed to my next step, staining the wood. Unlike many other students who chose to put the wood pieces together first, I chose to stain the wood first. This was because I believed after assembling the crate, there would be many corners that would be hard to paint and wipe out the excess paint. I picked a color I liked and stained all of my wood pieces.

Letting the wood settle down, take a rest, and dry, I then start assembling my crate. I first made three rectangles using the wood pieces and then connected them using the four pillar parts. The resulting crate looks great and I believe it will be durable and last long.

Cost estimation:

Labor: 9hr x $15/hr = $135

Wood (Estimate from the home depot): one 2×2 $8.95 and two 1×4 $8 = $16.95

Wood Stain: I only didn’t use much of the stain. I’ll consider this as $0.5

In total, the crate is costing $135+$16.95+0.5 = $152.45