For our most recent homework assignment, I built a crate out of 1×4 and 2×2 lumber. Coming into this project I had experience with miter saws and basic woodworking, but had never used a planar, jointer, or router. I like the way my box came out, but it could definitely benefit from the things I learned while making it.

My first step was to plan out the design I would use, and I decided to keep it simple and not use any angled miters, but I wanted all the fasteners to be put in from the inside so they wouldn’t be as obvious in the final design.

My first steps in construction the box was to cut the 1″x4″x8′ pieces of wood to length. For my design, I needed 6 16″ and 6 10.5″ pieces for the sides of the crate, along with 3 14.5″ boards for the bottom and 4 11″ long 2×2 boards to support the sides. I used the miter saw for all of these cuts, and aided by my prior experience had no trouble using it.

After cutting my pieces to size, I planed them all to smooth out the many imperfections in the wood, and jointed the 1×4 boards to give them right angles. This is where the first major problem I encountered happened. I planned for there to be no gaps in the bottom, and measured the side pieces to exactly match the width of three pieces. However, when I jointed the bottom pieces I took off a significant amount of material, and this left gaps in my final product, which if I were to do again I would take steps to account for the loss of material in the planing and jointing process.

After planing and jointing, I hit all the pieces with an orbital sander at 800 grit, which made the pieces nice and smooth in all the places that would become much harder to access after I assembled the box. Because I wanted

to hide the screws for my box on the inside, I couldn’t take the recommended route of assembling each layer of the sides of the crate before routing, so I then routed all the pieces of my box. I hit another snag here, as I wanted to use multiple different bits to learn how to change the router bit, but the second bit I chose was a cove bit, which left, unsurprisingly, a cove in the corner of my wood that I then decided I didn’t like. I switched to a 45˚ chamfer afterwards, but had to attempt to sand out the mark left by the cove bit.

I then assembled the two longer sides of the crate, before clamping each piece of the shorter sides to them and drilling pilot holes and screwing in. This process didn’t go completely smoothly, and my imperfect clamping left gaps in the corners that I didn‘t want. Overall, though, this process did work and the sides of my crate were joined with all the fasteners on the inside.

 

For the bottom, I wanted to keep the same screw-less exterior, so had to figure out how to do the screws from the inside. For the two pieces on the sides, I just screwed into the bottoms of the support 2x2s in each corner, but I had to find a different way for the middle bottom piece. For this I used a kreg jig to put pocket holes on the bottom of the piece, which only show up if the crate is flipped over. My poor planning caught up with me, and due to the fact that the rest of my box was completed at this point, I couldn’t clamp the piece in place and had to guess where the pilot holes in the sides would go. I got this slightly wrong, and the center bottom piece of my crate is a little higher up than the other two. Overall, I still think this was a successful choice, as it is just a little bit different than the other pieces, and I really like the screw-less look on the outside.

To correct for a few errors in alignment, I used a belt sander to get rid of excess material on some of the side pieces. I then rasped and filed the corners back into a shape I liked, and sanded the whole box with 120 grit followed by 800 grit on an orbital sander. To give the box a bit of a personal touch, I laser cut my name into the front. To finish the crate, I originally planned to use a dark stain, but was worried it would come out looking as fake as the color would be. I ended up opting for butcher’s block conditioner instead, which brought out the natural tones of the wood and made it shine more than bare wood would have.

                

Cost Estimate: (prices calculated using home depot)

– 1x4x8: $8.73 x 2 = $17.46

– 44 wood screws: ~$2.75

– Butcher block conditioner: $10 for bottle, less than 10% used so ~$1

– Labor: 9 hrs * $10 wage = $90

Total cost: $111.21, but excluding labor ~$21 dollars