I teamed up with Callum (the collab of the century), to create a crate! While both of us have done woodworking before for our ENGI 120 projects, this was the first time either of us have done post-processing on wood!

Cutting:

First, we chose and cut our wood pieces in the wood shop (under the supervision of a lab technician, of course). After this, we labeled all of our pieces. Pieces that were not as attractive (curved edges, and holes) were made sure to face the inside of the box, while the more uniform pieces were faced outwards and used both on the top and middle parts of the crate.

 

Routing:

We then used a hand router on the pieces. We were about to test the router on our wood when Dr. Wettergreen stopped us, and instead recommended that we try testing the router on some scrap before we do it on our own wood. We thank him for that because from practicing on scrap wood, we found that the setting we had the router on was too deep for our liking.

SANDING:

Next, we used the orbital sander (with 60 grit) on all of our pieces to make them smooth! Both Cal and I decided that since we were going to be spray-painting our crate, there was no need to go with a higher number. Next time, I think we will use a higher grit on the stained parts though, as while we found that the spray-painted planks of our crate were quite smooth, our stained planks aren’t.

Routing…AGAIN!

At this point in the process, we realized the intermediate box required two different routing patterns to be used, so we quickly went to the machine shop and used the router. Unfortunately for us, both the machine and hand routing were close to identical…with the machine routing looking superior. This was my fault, as I chose a rounded edge rather than the 90-degree router bit that Callum liked. Next time, I think I’ll listen to Callum’s advice and choose a more different routing style so that the ends look different. Also I believe I’ll use the machine router instead of the hand one as it was both quicker, and more attractive.

SPRAY PAINTING:

Half of the wood was then spray-painted with a dark green color (because green is our favorite color). Funnily enough, Callum and I had the opposite issues with spray-painting. I personally found it difficult to get a thick enough coat of paint on the planks, while Callum put too thick of a coat. After we spray-painted, we originally were going to leave them alone. Luckily, the TAs took notice and reminded us to pass over our spray paint with a sealing coat to protect it from the weather. Once our spray-painted planks have dried, so we took sandpaper (1000 grit), and gently passed over to smooth out the green coat.

staining:

Then we stained the rest of the wood with a dark walnut color to compliment the forest green. We followed the instructions of applying a thin layer of the stain, then waiting two minutes (with a timer) before removing the excess stain. So far, so good!

STENCIL MAKING:

We wanted to add more to our crate, since the dark walnut sides were looking a bit plain. So we each chose a character to add to our crate. Callum chose a blobfish (their favorite animal), while I chose Kirby! We originally wanted to laser cut the pieces, but we both ended up not having access to the laser cutter as we did not have Fabman accounts yet (We didn’t notice all the little square QR codes on all the machines up until this point :< ). So we decided to use the band saw to cut out scrap wood to the silhouettes of our designs. However, we also did not have authorization to use it, as once again, we didn’t know about Fabman. So we decided to use both the jigsaw, and the band sander to cut and add a smooth fillet to our scrap wood. Then instead of having a silhouette of our characters, we decided to make paper stencils of our designs, and spray paint them.

SPRAY PAINTING CHARACTERS:

We ended up spray-painting on the back of the scrap as a practice run, and learned that if we were too close or at the wrong angle, our spray paint would bleed through the stencil’s lines and make the characters look a bit ugly. We also did not like the fact that our scrap pieces were noticeably different colors. So we decided to do a white stain to make them more uniform, then spray paint on top.

I accidentally mixed some of the colors of the stencil, and blocked some parts off with tape, but ultimately I am happy with how it looks (especially since I’ve never spray-painted before). Next time I will be sure to bring some extra blank paper to block off parts I didn’t want colored in instead of depending solely on the stencil to block everything. Likewise, I will also be sure to tape down the stencil in more places, as the spray paint’s air did push some of the stencil’s parts away, resulting in some bleeding.

ASSEMBLY:

Finally…ASSEMBLY!!! Assembly went smoothly(-ish)! We followed the directions exactly, and joined our planks together with wood screws while clamping down the sides. After we completed our three wood levels, we screwed our levels to the 2x2s, and used two scrap planks to provide even spacing between each level.

We had a couple of mishaps, though. We accidentally drilled into the sides of our long brown pieces, resulting in two holes from the drill. However, Callum was able to cover up the mistake using wood chips, sawdust and wood glue. Also, with the countersink, I kept accidentally chipping the wood unintentionally, which made our crate look messy. We sprayed down the screws with spray paint and sealed them again to fix this. Ultimately, we found that using masking tape and slowing down our countersink drill bit reduced the wood coming off.

In addition, I accidentally assembled some planks upside down to each other, instead of matching the routed edges to each other before drilling.  We also accidentally assembled our top piece upside down, though we ended up liking how it made it much more comfortable to hold from the sides, so we kept it. Next time, we will definitely label our pieces after spray painting/staining with some masking tape, as the labels we originally made were covered by our colors.

The last step was nailing our character boards to the crate. We did end up bending a couple of nails, but from that we learned that we could bend them back into shape with pliers every time we messed up instead of tossing them out.

finished product:

 

Ultimately, I love how our crate turned out. I’m proud of both Callum and I, and I’m sure if we ever decide to make a crate again, we will use the skills we learned, and the mistakes we made to do an even better job! I do wish I wore gloves though because as of now, my hands as still covered in green.

cost estimate:

• Materials:
  • 3 1″ x 4″ x 8′ wood planks (Home Depot, $8.45 each): $25.35
  •  1 8′ 2″ x 2″ wood post (Home Depot, $4.88 each): $4.88
  • 5 Spray paint cans (Home Depot, $6.48 each): $32.40
  • 40 Screws (Home Depot, $32 for box of 365): $3.50
  • 8 Nails (Home Depot, $2.18 for box of 35):$0.50
  •  1 1/4″x 2′ x 2′ plywood (Home Depot, $7.99 each) : $7.99
• Labor: 20 hrs at $15 an hour: $300
• TOTAL: = $374.62