For this project, I used 1/2-inch wood fiberboard to construct my box. I chose to use fiberboard because it was readily available in the wood shop, and because of its uniform color/texture, which plywood doesn’t have.

I began by drawing up my box idea before measuring out the pieces and cutting them. I decided to make a square-base box, with a base of 8.5 x 8.5 inches. For the walls of the box, I would cut four identical planks measuring 6.5 inches tall and 8 inches wide. With four identical walls, I would assemble them in a fashion similar to what we did with the rapid cardboard box demo, so that the result was square.

Once I had the dimensions all drawn up, I measured out sections on a large piece of fiberboard and I cut them out on the table saw in the wood shop.

Once I had all of the pieces, I compared the four walls to each other and noticed some small size discrepancies. So, I squared them up to each other on two of the sides, clamped them together, and sanded the uneven sides. After that, I was left with perfect walls.

Once my pieces were the right size, I assembled them without fasteners, and marked the orientation of each piece. Then, I took the pieces to the router and curved some of the edges.

I routed the base plate and the tops of the walls, but left the sides of the box unrouted because I was worried about the screw heads protruding from the sides. I was not as worried about the ones on the bottom, because those would be less visually distracting.

Once I had everything routed, I assembled the walls with the help of a corner vice and a drill. I drilled pilot holes and inserted two small wood crews on each edge of the box.

Next, I added the bottom of the box and attached it using a total of eight small wood screws. After this was added, there were noticeable ledges between the boards, so I had to use the belt sander to smooth them out. You can see some curvature towards the bottom of the box where heavy sanding was done, but I thought this looked better than having overhangs.

Finally, I sanded the edges of the box that did not get routed, and I rerouted the top of the box to smooth out the connections between planks. Now I was done!!

Reflection

The fiberboard was sometimes difficult to screw together well, because it was relatively soft. The screws would often strip their whole before the head could be run into the box face, making it hard to overdrive the screws and get a smooth face. On one occasion, I even had to remove a screw and add a new one because it had stripped the hole. Another thing I learned was that if you go too slowly when using the table saw, it will start to burn the wood. One of my cuts has charring on it because of this.