My partner Mustafa Latif and I built a wooden crate!
Getting the wood
To start it off, we didn’t have any pre-cut wood, since we wanted a challenge and wanted to learn how to make a crate from as close to scratch as possible. Instead, we got several 9-foot wooden planks, measuring 3/4″ in height, and 3.5″ in width. We then used a mitre saw to turn them into appropriately sized planks, which were 9 14.5″ planks, and 6 12″ planks.
Unfortunately, I mismeasured one of the 12″ planks, which led to most of them being 1/16″ too small. As such, we had to recut all of the 12″ planks again.
Once we had all the planks ready, it was time to start routing and sanding.
Routing and Sanding
We routed the wooden planks so that the outside of the box would be uniformly routed, as well as the inside. Initially, we were confused as to how we were going to route the inside of the box since if we routed the entire plank, there would be an offset where the end of the 14.5″ plank would meet the routed inside of the 12″ plank. So, instead, we started routing 3/4″ off the beginning and end of the 12″ plank to make sure that the inside of the box stayed uniform.
Once the planks were routed, we sanded them at either 60 or 80 grit to start, and then finished them with a 220 grit to ensure a smooth edge. The hardest part was making sure that the corners were smooth since the router wasn’t able to go over the corners, so we had to improvise and remove any excess still there.
While we were routing, we had our fair share of large chips fly off the planks, which also necessitated re-cutting the planks.
Mustafa worked on the handles, and once those were done, we had all of our planks routed and sanded.
Assembly
We chose to assemble before staining, thinking that once we assembled everything, we might need to route and sand some more in case the edges weren’t consistent.
Whether luckily or unluckily, this ended up being the case, as we had a lot of inconsistent edges and corners, up to 1/16″ of deviation. One thing we did in particular was that since we knew that staining an entire crate at once was going to be a significant challenge, we decided that the best way to go about this was to assemble each layer of the box individually. Ideally, there should be no problem fitting the layers together since the difference in the sizes of the box would be small enough that it wouldn’t be an issue.
The trickiest part of assembling was the bottom layer, since we came to find out an unfortunate fact when we tried to assemble the bottom of our crate. Somehow, not only was our bottom layer too narrow, meaning it couldn’t fit 3 wooden planks, one end was 1.5/16″ wider than the other. This meant that our third wooden plank needed to be 3 5/16″ wide on one end and 3 6.5/16″ wide on the other. We tried using a bandsaw to give the wooden plank the right width, but it turned out to be significantly harder than expected to cut a straight line with it. When we tried adding in the third wooden plank the first time, we noticed a lot of inconsistencies that we felt didn’t cut it.
So, we restarted work on the third wooden plank, and after a while, thanks to Mustafa’s hard work sanding away at a 3 1/2″ plank, we got a finished base.
Staining
Once we had all the layers finished, it was onto staining. Initially, staining looked very promising, and seemed to be the most peaceful step of this process. After hours of working by hand with power tools, using a brush to paint on a coat of stain felt a lot more relaxing.
Unfortunately, my optimism was short-lived. When I first started applying the stain, I was aiming for a black coat, and instead got a more pine, earthy coat. Thinking the can of stain must have been mislabeled, I kept staining. It was only once I had stained the second layer that I realized something; the second layer was noticeably darker than the first. Confused, I made sure to mix the can of stain rigorously to make sure I was getting the correct color. Then, when I started the work on the bottom layer again, a nightmare scenario occurred.
The stain had turned completely black. This image doesn’t do justice to just how dark the stain turned out to be. At this point, 95% of the way through the project, I felt dejected, as I didn’t want to have to stain all of the layers again. Instead, I felt that the best way to continue was to embrace this change head-on. After some discussion with Mustafa, we decided that we would stain the bottom layer black, keeping the two other layers the same color, and opt for a tri-color, Neapolitan-esque crate.
Initially, we were fearful that the colors wouldn’t turn out well. However, by this point the choice was already made, and it was onto the final assembly.
Final Assembly
After waiting for 4 hours for the stain to dry, we started working on assembling all of our layers together, as well as the support pillars. We quickly found out that working with stained wood would be a little different, since it was ever so slightly more wet, and thus more prone to stripping when counter-sinking. 
We also found out that the assembly process would be a lot more difficult since it required us clamping the crate to the table while simultaneously clamping the pillars to the crate itself and having the two layers separated by wooden planks, resulting in a Frankenstein-monster-esque assembly.
When all was said and done, and we attached our name-plates, we had our final crate.
Though we were fearful of the tri-color design, I feel like we somehow managed to pull it off, and to be honest, I really like how it turned out.
Cost Analysis
Labor: 15hr at $10/hr = $150
Screws: 48ct at $6/100ct = $3
Stain: 0.1qt at $25/qt = $2.5
Wood: 24ft of 0.75in x 3.5in wood at $18.75/0.75in x 3.5in x 12ft = $37.5
Square wood: 4ft of 2in x 2in wood at $16/2in x 2in x 8ft = $8
Total cost: $201
This doesn’t include the use of machines, since we used so many and quite frankly it was hard to keep track.
This was a ton of fun, even though it was both physically and mentally demanding, and I’m really happy about the way our final crate turned out.
