This past week I had the opportunity to dive into some interesting workshops. These workshops allowed me to create a really interesting project that I’ve always wanted to build…a wooden crate!!!

For this particular project I ended up working with a partner, Karla (which worked in our favor because this was a tedious process).

the first step into creating a wooden crate is to have wood, and also luckily enough our TAs had precut the wood we needed to start working. Our goal was to build a crate with the dimensions of 16” x  12” x 12” that was routed and had the sides finished.

once we received our wood our first task was to smooth the edges so we went to the router in the OEDK’s woodshop. My partner and I decided to split up our tasks throughout this project. I routed a few pieces of wood, then she took over and routed the rest as I took what was done to one of the tables to start sanding the wood. We decided to start from 60 and go all the way up to 1000 and by the end the wood felt so soft that I didn’t want to touch it anymore.

Once Karla had finished routing she joined me in sanding and this was probably the longest process altogether. It honestly felt like we would keep sanding forever, especially since a lot of our wood was chipped, had stains, or had deep marks in it before we started working with it. To deal with the stains, unfortunately the planar was booked by other students so we decided to sand as much as we needed to so that we could remove any residue and with all of this sanding we had so much saw dust and the ones we didn’t throw away were put inside the deep marks in the wood to fill any gaps/holes. Instead of fully sanding we went up to 120 and decided to finish sanding once our wood was nailed together.

This was my favorite part of the whole project especially because I have some experience with drilling and attaching wood together. It was exciting using the corner clasp to finally bring our piece together and add our base. To put this together we utilized the 1/8” drill bit, a star drive, a drill, and a counter sink drill bit at size 3/4”.

Creation of a corner using wood

Bottom of box clasped to table

In no time we were able to have the crate assembled together. The next day we decided to finish our sanding and begin spray painting. Once again, we had to go through a long process but it was calming at the very least. We got through: 140, 150, 180, 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 grit sandpaper!

We were finally able to finish sanding and begin preparing for spray painting. It was important for us to have handles, and we believed that having rope handles would not only be fun but would look great on our crate so we drilled two holes in each side for the rope to go into. We originally wanted to stain with mahogany stain, but it was no longer available so instead we decided that we liked the color of our box and used clear spray paint over it. There was only once can of glossy clear spray paint so we the ought it’d be best to use two layers of the matte clear first then add the glossy clear on top. After a few hours of the process our box looked great and very shiny. The only problem was that it felt a lot rougher than it was before and we assume it’s due to the matte coating we used (or it could be that it needs more time to dry).

But, our box is complete and looks just as great as we thought it would! Once we finished another group had taken over our workspace for sanding and we placed our spray paint back where they were on the shelves outside! This was fun and I can’t wait to do more!

 

cost analysis:

1×4 lumber- We used about 16 ft of this lumber and the cost at Home Depot for about 8ft of this is $2.87. Therefore the price is $5.74.

2×2 lumber- We used about 4 ft of this lumber and the cost at Home Depot for about 8ft of this is $4.98. Therefore the price is $2.49.

Star screws- We used 72 star screws. Walmart sells 127 star screws (1lb) for $6.84. The price for what we used would be about $3.88.

Spray paint- Rust oleum 2x ultra cover gloss clear costs $5.98 at Home Depot and rust oleum 2x ultra cover matte clear costs $5.98 at Home Depot for 12fl oz each. We used about 2fl oz of the gloss clear and about 5fl oz for the matte clear. The price for what we used would be about $3.49.

Labor- The Texas average salary for a woodworker according to ZipRecruiter is $21, and my partner and I worked on this for about 10 hours each. Therefore the labor would be $210.

Rope- We used about 1/4 in thick, 2ft long polyester rope which costs about $0.91 per feet according to rope.com. The price would be $1.82.

Total- In total our process costs about $227.42.