Darshon and I partnered up to create a visually appealing crate that was sleek, functional, and the best quality. I thought initially with all the equipment we had at our disposal, detailed instructions, and enough patience, that putting together a crate couldn’t take that long. I told Darshon that I thought we could be done in like 2 hours. We’ll be out of here in no time.

Boy was I wrong.

Our first plan of action was to cut our wood according to the sizes provided in the assignment description. We found while cutting, that there were no more 2×2 pieces to cut for the supports of our crate. So, we had to improvise and scrounge around the woodshop to find some scrap pieces of 2×2 and use the table saw to cut them to size.

Once we had all of our pieces cut, we could start assembling them. I got pretty confused on orientation at first because I thought our piece was supposed to be 16 inches deep rather than wide.

Darshon helped to fix it though, and from here we were able to quickly assemble 2 the 3 levels of our crate. We decided to cut holes straight into the center of the wood of our crate for our handles. This choice made our crate look a lot more store made than hand made, so I think that it was a success, however, it made sanding and evenning out the holes very challenging. We made multiple passes with the jigsaw, sanded, and then made another pass with the jigsaw and sanded to get the holes as even as possible.

 

Once the handle holes were to our liking, we started to assemble the third level of our crate. I assembled this level. It went much more smoothly as I had learned from my previous blunder while assembling the middle level on how to orient the long and short sides to get the correct dimensions.

Once all three levels were assembled, it was time to start the base of the crate. We took the remainder of our planks and put the first two into the bottom frame with no issue, but when we went to slide in our third slat…it didn’t fit. We tried fighting it into the bottom, but we obviously didn’t want to split our wood and render the sanding we’d already done on our frames useless, so I had the idea to use the electric sander and grind away some of the excess wood, and then wedge it in snugly with a mallet. Thankfully, it worked out.

 

From here, assembly went smootthly. Once Darshon had finished securing the base, I stacked the other two levels on top. I had to put our crate on the ground so that I could reach and see what I was doing and ensure that all three levels were even. Which they weren’t. So I had to re center the middle level so that it was straight and even with the other two levels. Once everything was straight, with much difficulty, we removed the scrap pieces of wood we were using as guides to ensure even spacing between each level. One of them got stuck, so we had to user a mallet to hammer it out of the gap between our crate’s frames. But once that was all taken care or we whisked it outside to be stained and let it dry!

 

And this was our workspace after we were done.

As much fun as I had getting familiar with the equipement, the immense satisfaction I felt when sliding together the last part of our crate and drilling in the last screw after having spent the last unconsecutive 18 hours in the OEDK trying to reinvent the wheel was indescribable. My wrists still hurt while typing this, and I have a huge cut on my right index finger from when I was moving too fast changing drill bits. I had fun discussing design choices with Darshon and sanding, routing, and sanding our crate again until the wood was beyond smooth to the touch. But honestly, I think I will be taking a break from woodworking for a while. I’ll brainstorm some things to try in the meantime.