Over the last two weeks, Amelia and I built our wooden crate. I’ve always enjoyed woodworking (though I didn’t have as much experience as Amelia) so I really liked this project.
First, we cut out all our wood with the Miter Saw.
Then, we assembled the two bottom frames of our crate using corner clamps and screws. We used a mix of measurements and eyeballing to position the screws, which ended up working out.
While I was finishing up the frames, Amelia sketched out our handle design on two of the shorter pieces of wood. We decided to go with a trapezoidal shape, which ended up really comfortable.
From there, we were able to split up and work independently pretty well, allowing us to get a lot done faster. Amelia continued with the handle, cutting it out with a jigsaw, and then sanded all the wood with 60 and 120 grit sandpapers.
At the same time, I routed the two frames we built, swapped them with Amelia for the sanded handles so I could build the top frame while she sanded the bottom two.
At this point, we worked together to make the bottom of the crate by screwing three planks into one of the frames. One of the planks ended up being slightly too short to fit inside the frame, so while Amelia attached the other two planks I cut and sanded a piece of scrap wood from the laser cutter to fit as a shim.
Once the bottom was done, we drilled in the 4 posts and used some spacers to attach the other two frames to those posts. We were able to work at the same time, splitting up drilling pilot holes/countersinks and driving screws for peak efficiency.
Once the entire crate was assembled, we sanded it all again with a 220 grit on the orbital sander. We also sanded the inside of the handles by hand to make sure those were extra smooth.
After sanding, we applied a walnut finish over the entire crate. We were a little concerned that it was going to be too dark, but it ended up looking really good.
And here’s our final crate!
Overall, I’m very proud of our work on this project. I really enjoyed being able to work with my hands and get more woodworking experience, and we got to produce something cool and practical out of it.
Here’s our cost break down:
1×4: 202.5″ at $8.65 for 8′ = $18.24
2×2: 44″ at $2.97 for 8′ = $1.36
Screws: 60 screws at $50 for 1,466 = $2.04
Walnut finish: ~1/15 of bottle at $10 – $0.67
Labor: 5 hrs each at $11/hour = $110
Total: $132.31
If we were to factor in the cost of all the OEDK tooling it would probably be hundreds of dollars more. But to be fair, we can round up to $160.
And here are our cleaned workspaces:
