So the first couple blogs were pretty difficult to write. I’m not a fan of writing more words than necessary, and if a project was smooth sailing, then the summary should be brief.

That was not the case in this project.

I start working on the box Thursday after lab, hoping that starting it early will give me plenty of time for a project that seemed relatively simple.

Boy was I wrong.

So I’m in the wood shop, and I luck out. There is a workshop for the people who didn’t have a chance to see how the router works. I see how the machine works and then use the panel saw to take a big slab of the wood that I will turn into the panels. My plan is to hand saw the large plank into panels for the box but then a classmate informs me that we have a table saw in the wood shop. Thank goodness, because that would have actually been painful if I actually had to do all that hand sawing. So I saw the wood and head back down to the tool area. My initial plan is to use the Kreg Jig to have 16 screws in the wood, such that each wall will have two screws in the base and two screws on one of its neighbors.

Now, the saw job I did wasn’t great, but i figured I could sand the edges to clean them up. So then I use the Kreg Jig at the correct settings and start putting screws in. However, I run into a problem. None of the screws are going through.I check the Kreg Jig and see my fatal mistake.

I. FORGOT. TO. CHANGE. THE. (expletive). SIZE. ON. THE. JIG. APPARATUS.

Since my edges were super jacked up and sanding them my have put me under the size requirement, I decided to call it a night and remake the sides the next day.

Friday after classes, I head back to the OEDK to restart and hopefully knock this fool out. I cut more wood and (after adjusting the size of the Kreg Jig), I have the same set up again and start putting the screws in the sides. My plan was to screw all of the sides together, and then screw them into base. I have the sides screwed together, but them another problem arises.

THE. (expletive). DRILL. CAN’T. REACH. ALL. OF. THE. SIDES.

I can only drill 3 sides together, and I can’t fit the drill around the final side to attach. Now, rational people w/ limited resources would have unscrewed everything and put in the screws different. So, naturally, I decide to get rid of the panels and call it a night. Saturday rolls around, and I cut 4 more panels and make arrange the panels in a way such that one face of the block includes the length of one panel and the thickness of another panel. I then make 8 screw holes, 4 at the base at each corner, and 4 at each top right corner of each face such that they connect the edges of one block and the side of the face of its member (see pic below for view of the screws). Inserting the screws cracked the wood a little bit, but sanding the cracks made them disappear pretty effectively.

After that I unscrewed the top edges and routered all of the edges, screwed the edges back and sanded the side to try and flush them. I also rerouted after that but I forgot to take the screw out. It messed up the screw and I replaced it. but thankful the router bit wasn’t damaged to badly.

P.S. – Sorry for the lack of pictures. I’m already notoriously bad at rushing through things and not taking my time, and the frustrating nature of this made it that much worse.