I built a box! | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

I was excited as we moved into second project since we were doing something that I have at least a little bit of experience in: woodworking. Our task was to build a box that would be used for our personal storage for the rest of the semester. We had the option of cutting our own pieces of wood or using pre-cut ones, I opted for the latter as I had a lot going on at the time and was unsure if I would have had enough time to cut my own.

I first started by making the first of three frames to complete the box. I made sure to make use of pilot holes to avoid splitting the wood as well as made countersinks for each screw so that they would sit flush with the edge of the wood. These two techniques were used for the entirety of this project, so I tried to improve on them as I progressed on.

I repeated this process two more times to create the rest of the frames and headed outside to the loading dock to begin postprocessing. To begin this, I grabbed an orbital sander and with a 120-grit sheet I sanded the entirety of all the frames to make them feel as smooth as possible so that you could rub your fingers along them without worrying about getting a splinter. Once this was done, I decided to stain my wood and chose a dark chestnut color as I thought it would look good.

With the first frame I tested multiple techniques and stain amounts until I got a good, repeatable process that I was able to apply to the other frames. Despite getting the wood stain all over my fingers I think this portion of the project went pretty well. In the future I can definitely speed things up here as it took a bit of time until I was satisfied with how it looked.

Next, I began to stain the base, and this was the part I was most nervous about as I didn’t want to have stain dripping down it or have dark spots where I used to much stain, especially in the corners. This part is where I spent most of my time staining. Lastly, I finished up with the vertical supports of the box.