Overview

This project was one I was very excited for, given I had limited experience woodworking but I really wanted to get better at it and learn to use some new tools.  All woodworking I’ve pretty much ever done has been unfinished, so I only built things for their function and not their form.  This project gave me the chance to use so many more tools that made my wood projects look and feel much better.

Crate Base

I wanted to challenge myself on this project and try to make a fancy base that consisted of many glued-together components; I’ve seen a lot of those types of designs on YouTube and they look amazing once stained.  Many of them involve gluing wood together, then cutting it again, and then re-gluing it, but I decided that was too complicated given the time frame I had.  I instead went for a sort-of “spiral planks” design that would have a 2×2″ square in the middle that I could inset something into.  This is the drawing I made of the design, the red wood planks are nowhere near proper scale (I can’t rotate the image for some reason, sorry):

This told me exactly what size planks I needed to cut in order for everything to come together properly.  However, I also knew that it would require quite a lot of accuracy and precision to get right, since every piece needed to fit together just right.

I started by cutting out the first 16″ piece of 1×4; I cut one end of the raw plank off to square the edge, then cut the piece just over 16″.  I then took off very small chunks in small passes of the mitre saw (I set this up by pressing the workpiece against the blade, then lifting the blade so that it flexed back just a tad over the workpiece).  This let me get it to exactly 16″ pretty easily, it just took some time.  I then repeated this for the next 12.5″ pieces and the 9″piece.

Next came the first glue-up.  I clamped and glued together the 16″ and a 12.5″ in one part, then the other 12.5″ and the 9″ piece in another part.  I then joined these two parts together with more wood glue and two big quick clamps.  This let me get really good precision alignment without too many clamps.  I did the gluing on top of a wood board, but put paper towels between the wood and the workpiece so that it didn’t bond to the support board.  The base looked like this after the first glue-up:

As you can see in the left image, there’s a tiny nub of wood extending near the bottom right corner where the wood meets.  One of the boards wasn’t perfectly square, but it was close enough that the glue-up worked properly, so I had to then deal with this small protrusion.  I ran the piece through the table saw to knock off that small nub and then continued the glue-up process.  Next was the first interior piece, which I also had to size carefully.  In theory it should be exactly 9″, but after cutting to 9″, it was a bit too large to slide into the center.  I used the same strategy of taking off very small amounts of wood with “blade deflection passes”, and tested the fit after each cut until it was perfect.  I then covered the 3 edges that touched the walls in wood glue and inserted the piece.  Here’s the piece fitting in just before glue:

After this one, I realized this part of the project was taking up way more time than it probably should have been, and I needed to do the rest of the crate.  I decided to finish the base, I would simply cut a piece of plywood to fit the rest of the base, which could give me a cool two-tone look that looks like a random pattern of wood grain in the middle.  I picked a good piece of plywood and used the same cutting strategies as before (except with the table saw) in order to get a perfect fit.  I then added wood glue and pushed the piece in the middle.

After the glue-up, the bottom of the base was covered in extra glue and paper towel pieces that were stuck on from the gluing process.  I hit the base with the orbital sander for a good while and got all of it off; here’s a before and after of the underside of the base:

Due to a few small misalignments in gluing, the base’s surface texture was uneven.  Since it couldn’t fit in the planar, I attacked the imperfections with a rasp for what felt like hours until it was relatively even, then hit it with the orbital sander until it felt smooth.  Lastly, I sanded down both sides with 220-grit sandpaper until they had a relatively even finish.  I was super happy with the results of the base and was so excited to see what it looked like stained!

Crate Posts and Slats

Next came the cutting of the posts and slats that made up the crate’s frame and body.  I cut out all of these on the mitre saw; I ended up with my 4 12″ posts, 6 16″ slats, and 6 14.75″ slats in order to fully surround the crate.  I spent another hour on the planar getting the posts and slats to look clean; the posts were especially hard because they started so rough but the final results looked so sharp.

When planing my slats, I wanted to make sure the fit around the outside was perfect, so I chose to plane the 16″ slats until the exterior fit was perfect with the 14.75″ slats.  I stopped planing just short of this, but that was because I felt it already looked good and didn’t want to risk making them too small.  I test fit around the sides a few times to make sure they would look good; this is what a test fit looked like:

Next up came actually putting everything together!  In order to properly orient the wood posts, I aligned the first layer of the slats exactly how I wanted them, put some wood glue on the bottom of the posts, and placed them right in the corners of the test fits.  After letting them dry, I went back and drilled holes through the bottom of the base so I could screw them down.  Here’s what that looked like before screwing in the slats:

Now it came time to screw down the slats to the posts.  I clamped the 14.75″, or “inner” slats down to the posts, drilled two pilot holes at the top and bottom of each slat for each post, and screwed them in.  Each inner slat was attached with two screws to the posts.  In order to do the 16″, or “outer” slats, I chose to screw each one down directly into the sides of the inner slats.  I chose this because with my 2″ screws, the screw tip would protrude slightly outside of the post if I screwed them into the posts.  Also, since the inner slats were anchored to the posts, I still got enough structural strength out of it and everything looked good.

I oftentimes clamped the pieces into the right orientation, which stressed the base a bit during assembly.  Because of this, the final result teeters a bit on its corners, but that could be fixed by putting something on the bottom like feet that allow it to stand normally.  I repeated this process for the top slats.  At this point, I noticed that I did the top slats 90º offset from the bottom ones, so instead of redoing it, I embraced the “asymmetrical look” that I already had in my base and screwed the middle ones in another 90º offset.  It doesn’t look great to the trained eye, but it’s fine for those who aren’t OCD about it like I am.  Here is the crate with the top slats attached, as well as one showcasing my clamping setup:

Finishing/Staining

After I finished the assembly, I quickly hit each sharp corner with a file and filed down the few screw tip protrusions on the posts.  I then hit the entire thing with 220 grit sandpaper until I liked the finish.  I didn’t take a photo of it before staining, which was a mistake, but now came the time for that!

I chose the Rust-Oleum “Barn Red” wood stain to match my college colors and because I thought it would show up well on my base.  This part took a very long time; I spent over an hour outside with a paintbrush getting stain all over the piece.  I didn’t have time to stain the underside, which is something I’d like to go back and do later.  I wiped off as much as I could in the dim light and decided to come back later to finish it off.  The next morning, I came back and wiped off any residual stain left over (there was a good bit, the texture was quite sticky).  The texture is still a bit sticky, but I hope that will improve now that it has a bit more time to cure.  I also would like to go back and clear coat the whole piece, but I haven’t yet decided what type of clear coat I’d like to use.  Here’s a couple photos of the final crate, with one looking down on the glued-up base:

Reflection

Overall, I’m really happy with the results of the crate project.  I feel like I got a lot better at precision woodworking, although I still have a long way to go to be at the level I want to be at.  Specifically, I want to add tools like the joiner to projects in order to properly square things off (I used the planer most of the time) and also improve my staining skills so I can get a more even finish (should be easier with smaller workpieces).  My glued base was successful and the final product looks really good in my opinion.  I would likely spend more time squaring off each piece of wood and getting the dimensions to exactly what I want before gluing anything if I chose to take the base project on again; with the rest of the crate I’d want to just spend a bit more time making sure everything fit well and looked good before screwing it all together.  I also might choose a different stain; this one looks really good but is a bit brighter than I anticipated.

Cost Analysis

• Labor: 8 hours at ~$20 an hour = $160
• 1×4: 2x 96″ boards at ~$4 a board (Lowes) = $8
• 2×2: 1x 96″ piece at ~$4 a piece (Lowes) = $8
• 2″ Screws: 1 box of 100 at ~$8 a box (Lowes) = $8
• Stain: 1 can at ~$14 a can (Ace Hardware) = $14
• Tools are a shared resource = $0

Overall, this project cost about $198, including my approximate hourly wage and all consumable expenses.