Hello again! I’m back for my second post to share about my experience with our first homework assignment, making a box.
My first step was to draw out how I wanted the box to look and to determine what pieces I needed, as well as the size of those pieces. My original drawing can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: My original drawing of the Box
As you can see in the above drawing, the dimensions of each of the pieces depended on some length x and the thickness of the wood pieces, t. For my box I chose to use x = 7″ and the thickness of the wood I used was t = 0.7″. Once I had these dimensions chosen I was ready to move onto the next step, cutting the pieces!
This process began by selecting the wood, and the wood I chose to use is a thicker plywood. I figures that by using a thicker material, I would have less of a chance of splitting the wood, and the fasteners I would use would be more firmly seated in the wood, and therefore be stronger. To cut the pieces, I used the table saw in the wood shop. I originally set the cut length to 7″, cute each of the side pieces, then increased the length to 7.7″ and cut the base piece. My final cut pieces can be seen in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: My Freshly Cut Box Pieces: Base piece on left and Side pieces on right
Once the pieces were cut, I was able to begin assembling them. I began by using the kreg jig (a device to screw pieces of wood together from the inside) to attach 2 pairs of two pieces of wood together. I added the screws such that they were closer to the edges of the piece rather than the middle. This, along with clamping the pieces while screwing them in, allowed me to make the edge fit as closely together as possible. After this I had two “L” shaped pieces and the square base. I was unable to use the kreg jig to attach the L pieces together because the drill bits and the drill were too long to fit in the space between the pieces. So, to complete attaching the sides of the box, I simply screwed the pieces together from the outside. I completed assembling the box through attaching the base from bottom.
In this process of attaching the sides together is when I made my biggest mistake. When I was drilling the holes to screw into, the first hole I created was in the wrong corner–I had already secured that corner with the kreg jig. So, I was left with an unsightly screw shape. I ended up making some DIY wood putty with some wood glue and sawdust, and (fairly) successfully filled the hole. The final, sanded, spot can be seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3: My (Fixed) Mistake
After completely assembling my box, I moved onto the finishing steps: using the router on the edges and sanding. The routed edges are visible in Figure 3 above, and I used this slight routing on all of the edges of my box. Once routed, I proceeded to use the orbital sander on all faces to minimize any slight overhangs and to make the faces as smooth as possible. I finished off by taking some fine grit sandpaper and smoothing over the edges a final time. At this point, I had a complete box, which can be seen in Figure 4!
Figure 4: My Completed Box!!
Finally I’ll look into the costs that have gone into making this box. I used approximately 256 square inches of a $35.98 piece of plywood (3/4 in. x 4 ft. x 8 ft. Sanded Plywood) this works out to around $2 dollars of wood. For fasteners: I used 12 No. 8 x 1 1/4 in Screws which can be purchased for $5.58 for a 100-pack, for a total of $0.67. I also used 4 No.6 x 1-inch Screws for the kreg jig slots which can be purchased for $4.99 for 100, which works out to $0.20. I spent 4 hours creating this box, and at a rate of $20/hour, labor costs are $80. This leads to a total cost of $82.87.
