When I first read the project description, I was very excited. In high school, I worked in a warehouse, so I dealt with poorly constructed wooden crates that broke easily quite frequently. I always thought that these crates looked cool, but they just fell apart if you dropped them and were flimsy. That is why I sought to create a wooden crate that had the same, simple aesthetic, but more structural integrity and woodworking skills. To do this, I found some 1″ x 4″ lumber and started making miter cuts. I cut the wood at a 45 degree angle in order to join them cleanly in final assembly. The shorter side of the miter cut was set to 14″ as the 1″ x 4″ wood was really only 3.5″ wide, making 14″ logical to place 4 base boards. I had to cut 12 of these mitered boards and used the miter saw. Then I cut 4 base boards out of the 1″ x 4″ and cut them to 14″. Finally, I cut four 16″, 1″x 1″, poles to construct the crate. After cutting, I routed each piece of wood with the hand router and used the 3/8″ round over bit. However, I set the bit a little higher in order to create a sharp edge with the rounded part and the rest of the wood. I liked how this looked and did that with every piece of wood that can be seen below along with the miter saw and router. Below I also included a picture of the routing pattern. This picture is from a test piece of wood and deeper than the actual crate, but it gives perspective:
After cutting the wood, I made sure to fit all the wood together and fix any issues that arose there. The first step of this was to join one corner of the base together and then attach the base boards:
This allowed me to add the next two lower boards and create the entire base. I then used the rest of the mitered wood to create two more squares and roughly figured out the details on how I would mount them to the rest of the box. I used this to determine that the gap between each board was going to be 3 3/16″. I mounted the wood using a 1/8″ screw bit to drill the pilot holes. This process took a while, but I was able to get the appropriate fit. After this, I counter sank all of the screws with the 5/16″ router bit and began post processing. One thing that occurred with the miter joints was that they had a small gap. Rather than get discouraged, I used this as an opportunity to add a different wooden element as an inlay. I got some scrap wood and glued it into the gap in order to add another aesthetic element. Below are pictures of a well fitted joint and one that needed an inlay:
After fixing all the gaps and countersinking the screws, I was able to start sanding. For the entire sanding process, I left the entire crate assembled and just used smaller scraps of sandpaper to get the corners. To begin I rounded off all the sharp edges with a file and got any rough areas smoother. The file was mainly used to remove large sections of wood. I then got the orbital sander and 40, 80, 100, 180, 320, and 400 grit sandpaper. I used this to smooth out all the outside boards and some of the corners. I started with 40 grit, sanded all reachable surfaces, and then repeated with 80 grit all the way to 400 grit. This created a very smooth finish on the outside and inside boards. To get the smaller areas, I used long strips of 100, 220, and 400 grit sand paper. I then sanded the smaller surfaces so that there were no rough areas and the corners were nearly rounded.
Finally, I used a lot of paper towels to apply a tung oil finish on all the surfaces of the box. I initially wanted to do a darker stain, like walnut, but then realized that I wanted to preserve the lighter appearance of the box. There were many sections where the wood had small imperfections and I wanted to showcase those with a light stain. I also liked this stain as it didn’t make the crate look too fancy. My goal was to create something that was unassuming from a distance, but up close one could see some craftsmanship. The final crate looks like this:
Looking back, there were many aspects of this project that I enjoyed and some changes I would implement. My crate was design for larger items and I like how it looks. However, small objects may be stored in this crate, making some of the gap between boards too big. I may have added one more board to minimize the gap, but I ran out of time. While the miter joints give a nice aesthetic, it was very hard to make them flush. In the future, I would still do miter joints, but I would take more time to cut them. I had to do a lot of file work in order to get some of the joints to look presentable. I really wanted to do more custom wood carving and file work, but I like how the joints turned out with the rounding and sanding. My favorite aspect of my crate is how it is approximately a cube, not a rectangular prism. Overall, I enjoyed working on this project, but wished I had started earlier to minimize the amount of work I had to do post processing.
For a cost analysis, I worked on this for about 8 hours. The average salary of a woodworker according to indeed.com is $19 per hour. Given my lower level of skill, I will set this to $15 / hr. I used four 16″ 1″x1″ boards, 12 approximately sixteen inch 1″x 4″ boards, and 4 fourteen inch 1″ x 4″ boards. This equates to 64 inches of 1″ x 1″ and 248 inches of 1″ x 4″. Using the Home Depot website, this wood costs around 30 dollars and there were 54 screws which adds up to around around 5 dollars. The wood stain can be bought for 20 dollars a can, but I didn’t use the whole can, so we can estimate that to be around 4 dollars. Therefore the total cost of the crate with labor is $159.
