Long story short: I made a box!
Long story long:
I began by enlisting the help of a lab tech in order to use the table saw to cut some wood from the wood-shop into five appropriately sized faces for my box (Figure 1). After assembly, each face of the box is 8in x 8 in.
Figure 1. Five nice panels; little did they know, they would soon be a box
Next, I balanced the pieces together into a box-shaped configuration in order to label the edges that I would need to run through the router. I color coded these specific edges with a purple marker (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Purple edges; little do they know, they will soon be smoothed down by the router
After this, I used a combination of the corner clamp and various other spur-of-the-moment clamping configurations to safely screw all the pieces of the box together (Figures 3 and 4).
Figures 3 and 4. various clamping configurations
I added screws to the bottom face of the box by coming at the box from the vertical angle (straight down) and therefore enlisting gravity’s help. In this configuration, screws were easy to countersink. However, I came at the screws on the side faces of the box from the horizontal angle. This is where I started running into some trouble. I stripped several of the screws… like… a lot. When I first started to notice this issue, I tried to remove them and try again (Figure 4). However, the issue did not go away, and I stripped one of them to the point where not only could I not countersink it, but I also could not remove it (Figure 5). Functionally, all the screws work to hold the sides together, but aesthetically a couple of them protrude from the sides of the box more than the countersunk ones do. I’m still not sure whether or not this happened because of the angle, because of the drill settings, or because of some reason unknown to me. (if whoever reads this wants to educate me some more about proper drilling techniques to prevent the stripping of screws, please let me know!).
Figure 5. super sad stripped screw 🙁
Everything was relatively straightforward after that. Some of the edges were slightly misaligned, so I took to the belt-sander to smooth out the issue (Figures 6 and 7).
Figures 6 and 7. before and after of sanding down some corners
That’s it! Now I have a box! My box is certainly not perfect, but I’m proud of it nonetheless. I even sent my family back home this lovely SnapChat (Figure 8)!
Figure 8. a SnapChat of my box
Cost Analysis:
Materials: According to Home Depot, $19 for 3.4in 2ft x 4ft –> $19 for 1,152 in^2 –> divided by 3.6 –> $5.28 for 320 in^2
Labor: $10 x 2.25 hours = $22.5*
*I spent about 2 hours on this box, and a lab tech helped me for about 15 minutes, for a grand total of 2.25 hours. I selected $10 per hour because that’s the amount I made at my summer job, which ended a few weeks ago.
Total: $5.28 + $22.50 = $27.78
