In less than 700 words, I will take you through the process of 20 man hours (40 combined) over two days filled with hardship, struggle, blood, sweat, & tears to create this glorious crate:

lets jump into it

THE PROCESS

Grabbed lumber, cut into 9 14.5″ 1×4 pieces, 6 12″ 1×4 pieces, and 4 10″ 2×2 pieces. Cut the 1×4 using the miter saw, then we had to use the table saw to cut our lumber into 2×2 because there wasn’t any 2×2 left.

We didn’t think cutting the handle out of the bottom of the piece of wood looked very nice, so instead we switched to cutting a hole in the middle of the piece of wood (bad idea). This added an extra 6 (SIX) hours to the project.

First I marked it out, 3.5 inches from the sides and 1 inch from the top and bottom, making a square. Then, I realized I had no clue how to cut this out. So I asked around and got the following ideas: Drill and jigsaw or dremel. First, I tried the dremel. I had to assemble one from scratch using the instruction manual. Took an hour. And after that one hour, I turned it on and pressed it to the wood only to be met with literally zero effect on cutting the wood. So I pushed it a little harder and it exploded. So the dremel was out. Next I took a drill with a quarter-half inch bit and drilled holes in the wood to fit a jigsaw. But after I did that, I realized the jig saw needs a hole on the bottom of the table because the blade goes much deeper than the piece of wood. I looked around the OEDK, and there was a promising place in the wood shop on the table saw, but the cord wasn’t long enough. So instead I had to manufacture my own table with two pieces of scrap wood and some clamps. Needlessly to mention, this was INSANELY dangerous. I couldn’t place the jigsaw all the way flat on the piece of wood, so I was holding it up and cutting, almost like a chain saw. But, we got the job done. After that, it was a very square and rough hole, so we sanded it down to make it look more like a handle.

Then, we joined the lumber into squares using clamps and the squaring tool. There was a mistake made when first assembling, where box would have more square dimensions, so theres a couple holes where that mistake was made.

After that we routed the wood and sanded it down. Routing was an adventure. The screws were way too close to the edge of the wood. Sparks went flying once. Not doing that again in the future. Sanding was a lot of fun. Made sure to remove all the black text from the manufacturer and soften all the edges.

Next we assembled the bottom by using some clamps and drilling into the wood. Good classic stuff we’ve seen before. When putting the last board in though, it wouldn’t fit. So we had to sand it down. While it was being sanded down, I redid some of the screws because it wasn’t countersunk deep enough. While doing this, I cracked nearly all of the wood around each screw. In the future, definitely screwing it in farther from the edges.

Then we put the squares on top of each other, making sure to leave a gap between each square. Another mistake was made where the middle section was uneven. Redid it to make sure it was straight.