Here’s the box.

 

I decided to cut the wood myself and with the high demand of the miter saw it took me quite a few days to get that done. Then the miter saw broke. Then me and the lab assistant couldn’t get the table saw to work. The band saw was too small. So, I ended up using the jigsaw to cut some of my 12 inch 1×4 boards. I also got some last pick wood so I spent a while sanding down the pieces and sanding down the bark that was still on some pieces.

Some of the wood was curved in a C shape along the 4 inch side so that made joining corners a little bit inconvenient. I was able to clamp to curvy parts so that they straightened out a little when joining them together. I routed the edges and used a rasp to take material off of the outer corners. I used 80 grit sandpaper to smooth out the rougher spots post rasping.

After, building the 3 levels I stained the entire thing with Danish Oil. I like the natural but slightly darker look. After I wiped the excess oil and allowed it to dry for a bit I started building the layers.

I first attached the 11 inch pieces to the base and oriented them such that even with their slight curves, they were not bending outwards. I also put the rougher edges of the wood towards the outer boards. When inserting the screws I loosened some at first so that I could stack the last 2 layers on top without force. I tightened the base screws and attached the top layer aligned with the top of the 11 inch pieces. With the top and bottom attached, I was able to measure and slide around the middle board to be centered between the layers. I then sanded with 150 grit sand paper and sprayed the box with a clear coat to seal the oil.

And that’s the box.

While attaching at first I was drilling the pilot hole and then the countersink hole which made many of the holes start to shred. When I was assembling the layers, due to the 1/8 in drill bit becoming scarce, I learned that doing the countersink hole first and then the pilot hole resulted in clean holes.

 

For cost, assuming I get paid about $12/hour I spent about 10 hours making this box ($120). It cost about $4 for a 1×4 board and I needed about 3 ($12) . If I used about 60 screws and it cost about $45 for a box of 1842, that would be 60/1842*45 = $1.47 in screws. Finally it is about $14 for a can of Danish Oil wood stain. The total cost would be about $147.47