I made another wooden box this week, but very different from my previous one – this one was smaller, had designs etched onto it, and was held together with my fingers because otherwise it- oh, sorry, wrong box; this one was held together with WOODEN fingers.

The first thing I wanted to do was make my box, so I went to MakerCase to print out a template for a simple box, 4 inches on each side, with a laser kerf of 0.01 – a value I had gotten from testing earlier. I downloaded the box template, added my college crest on one side, and on another I put my name and a circular cutout (What’s the point of a box if you can’t put stuff inside it???).

That left four sides. And there are four nations in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was perfect. I googled up some logos for the different elements, slapped ’em on the remaining four sides, and we were set!

Well, almost. I assumed my kerf value from testing was going to give me an accurate cut and a tight fit, but I wanted to be sure, so I took two edges of the box and made a quick cut to ensure that the fit was good.

As it turned out, the fit was a little bit tight, but I felt it was good enough to make a nice box, so I went ahead and started cutting out my actual box!!

 

After cutting out all of the parts of my box, I began to put it together, and quickly found out that the slight extra tightness from the test was compounding very quickly with the full box. The first two faces went on relatively smoothly, but after that I had no choice but to pull out the mallet. Some consistent, light taps around the edges of my box, and it soon came together no problem!!

 

After that, it was just a matter of cleaning up my workspace, and I could call it the night before the project was due, uh, I mean, I could call it a night. Just a night. An ordinary night.

Cost:

Plywood: $0.41 (The cost of the plywood I used, not the entire sheet)
Laser cutter: $300 ($150/hr for 2 hrs)
Labor: $45 ($15/hr for 3 hrs)

Total: $345.41