I would first off like to say that distractions can make for unfortunate blunders. I’ll talk about that later. The box seen in the featured image was first planned out on paper. It was meant to have a 9”x9” base as seen in the basic blueprint design drawn below.

The walls were to be wider on two parallel sides and narrower on the other remaining sides. This would make the cutting easier and more precise. After drawing out a basic blueprint, I measured out the sides onto a piece of wood from the woodshop. I left some space between the sides to account for the saw blade width.

After cutting the board up, I proceeded to assemble the box. Using corner clamps to hold the pieces in place, I drilled 2 wood screws into each corner and 4 nails into the base. While I was working on the second corner, I became distracted and misaligned the sides. This led to my box turning into a rectangle rather than the square I had planned. This also meant that my base wouldn’t fit so that had to be re-cut. With that in mind, I proceeded to cut a new piece and use the router on the walls of my box. After finishing that up, I had a completed box!

Some of the issues I saw with my box was that since the walls were so thin, the screws had to be in place perfectly. The walls were also prone to bending so I had to try really hard to eliminate the gaps that caused. The quality of the wood that I chose also could have been better. The wood I had was very rough and I spent some time sanding it down as well. In total, I think this box would probably cost something like $20-$30. Most of the cost I would say is attributed to the wood which can range from $10-$20 and the labor and machine time would take the rest of the cost. Looking back at this, I could have been more precise in certain areas but it was great intro assignment and I enjoyed making this box.