Tough crowd.

Well, another week another project. This time around, I built a crate with Sandeep. We had a great time on Thursday starting the project after various scheduling issues. We got our wood pre-cut for us but there were some variations in lengths, which we fixed using the miter saw. After making the three “rings” of the crate, we called it a day.

 

On Friday, I was so bogged down by meetings and classes for the most part of the day. At around 8pm, I thought about sleeping but remembered about the crate. After biking to the OEDK, I proceed to work until 2 in the morning finishing up the crate and helping some other students on a fiberglass project.

Since we built all the rings already, I routed all of the edges so that they are smooth. The stationary router was fun to use, but I do think an arrow showing which directions the wood should go would be a nice touch on the machine, as I was confused initially and had to experiment with a spare piece of wood.

I had an issue where some screws were a bit too close to the edge and was hitting the router bit, which was not good. After some considerations, I removed any screws that appeared to be problematic before routing the edge that the screws sat.

Obviously after routing everything, there were a lot of sawdust on the work surface, so I had a blast using the floor vacuum cleaning the area. It was satisfying to vacuum up all the sawdust, and I might consider getting myself a shop vacuum like that.

The base of the crate was slightly tricky, as after we did the length corrections, we can no longer fit the 3 pieces of wood at the bottom. I had to use this planer to shave some layers off.

Putting things together was straightforward, had to use the clamps to force the top layer down as the fitment was fairly tight.

As usual, clean tables and sanded crate. We had a busy week, but I am happy with the result given the time constraint we had.

As for cost, it’s really difficult to estimate because our level of labor for sure does not not meet the average cost for labor.

1 in. x 4 in. x 8 ft planks at Home Depot priced at $8 per, considering spares, runs about $20 for 18’+ of wood

Most of the tools are indirect cost, where a portion of the cost cannot be prorated to each crate. We will assume that we have a neighbor who owns all the tools needed and was generous enough to let us use them for free.

8 hours of work for $7.25 an hour – $58

 

Total: $78