My journey toward building a crate was a long and storied one. I began with a large amount of wood prep to account for the very roughly milled wood I was working with. First, all of the wood was cut 3 in longer than the final size to be used with the rather small planer and jointer. Next, I ran all of the wood through the planer to make sure it was flat and ran all of the outer pieces through the jointer to square the corner. The wood was relatively unrefined with many knots, bark segments, moisture, and cracks so even with all of this work, the final wood was less clean than I had hoped for. There was a moderate amount of tear out from planing that I had to address with an orbital sander. I rounded the edges of the planks that go around the outside of the crate and chamfered the corner posts using the router table. Next, I sanded the wood using an orbital sander to remove manufacturing defects, starting with 260 grit sandpaper and moving on to 400 and 800 grits. I noticed the pine has a tendency to tear and splinter so I had to be abundantly careful to minimize how aggressive I was while sanding. Then, I mitered the corners of each of the side planks as I cut them down to roughly the actual size and followed up with more sanding. Next, I took the two pieces that have handles and cut the handle recess freehand on the bandsaw, following it up with a round-over on both sides from the router table to make the grip smooth. I then assembled the three base pieces using the Kreg jig to recess the screws so they would not be visible in the final project and screwed each of the four corner posts onto the base. I laser cut my name into one of the side planks to identify the crate as mine when it sits on the ENGI 210 shelf. I took all pieces outside and lightly stained them using a cherry semi-transparent stain for protection and to bring out the natural color in the wood. Then, I assembled the crate, sanding lightly as I went to perfect the fit. Screws were inset into each of the corner posts on the inside to effectively hide all screws from the outside perspective. I used a level and cut spacers to make sure all edges were square. I then sanded the corners to prevent splinters. Finally, I did touch up stain on the parts I had sanded and gave all surfaces a light coat of mineral oil to smooth and protect the surface, before buffing the wood to a shine. At last, my crate was complete!

Cost Breakdown:

$16 – 2×2-8ft Unfinished Pine Board (Lowes)

$30.4 – Two 1×4-8ft Unfinished Pine Board (Lowes)

$9.98 – Box of 127 #8 x 2in Wood Screws (Lowes)

$8.48 – Cherry Semi-Transparent Interior Stain (Lowes)

$195 – 13hrs of labor at $15/hr

Total cost: $259.86

Yikes, that is one expensive crate!