Hi Everyone!
In this blog, I will be taking you through the process of me building a box from lumber. We prepared the wood, assembled the layers, stained, then did a final assembly of the box.
We received pre-cut wood. We received 9 1×4 lumber of 14.5”, 6 1×4 lumber of 12”, and 4 pieces of 2×2 lumber 11” long. The wood we received, however, was warped and had a lot of uneven edges, so we had to use the belt sander to fit the wood well.
Fig. 1 Uneven lengths of wood
First, we prepared the wood using the belt sander. We put the woods together in order to see how much we needed to sand off, and marked it with a pencil. Then, we sanded that amount off. After this, we sanded the woods down with a 120 grit hand sander, then a 240 grit hand sander. This was done in order to have all of the sides prepared before putting them together. (Fig. 2)
Fig 2. Sanding the wood
Fig. 3 fitting the wood in to make sure everything fits together
Next, we nailed the wood using the corner clamp. We marked the spots that needed to be nailed in, and put a pilot hole using the ½” drill bit. Next, the hole was re-drilled with the countersink drill bit. Finally, the screw was able to go in straight without splitting the wood and sit smooth with the surface due to the countersink. We repeated this step to all 4 sides of the wood, creating our first layer. Then, we used the hand router to trim the edges of the wood. After using the hand router, we realized that the edges were not as smooth, so we went in again with a hand sander to make everything smooth as possible. We repeated these steps to create a total of 3 layers.
Fig. 4 Our layers
Staining was the next step, and we used the dark walnut color. First, we applied the stain on our wood pieces, then we waited for 2-3 minutes, then we wiped the stain off. We waited 24 hours for the stain to dry. This is the final color of our crate!
Fig. 5 After staining
Now that the layers are ready, we assemble the box. We placed the 3 bottom planks and drilled into the sides of the first layer using the same process as before – pilot hole, countersink, screw. Then, we placed an extra piece of 1×4 lumber as spacers to make sure that the space is evenly distributed. On top of this lumber, we placed the next layer and drilled this into our standing 2×2 pieces of lumber. We did this for the final layer of the box as well. We now have a finished box!
Fig. 6 assembling the layers
Fig. 7 Our Finished Crate!
Here is the picture of our working space after cleaning up:
Fig. 8 Our cleaned up work space
We spent a total of 5 hours on the box, and assuming that labor is $15, we have 5*15= $75. Next, the lumber cost is $3.58 for 1×4 4 ft, and for this box, we needed 16 ft of 1×4, which would be $14.32. The 2×2 total cost is $2.49. The hand tools were at the OEDK, so I did not account for those. The stain we used was $12, but the amount we used will be approximated to $0.5. The nails we used were $0.5. I approximated the cost of the material from the Home Depot website. Adding these up, we have $96.39.
