I did this project with the wonderful Catherine Wang!!
Fearing the miter saw, I originally wanted to ask for precut wood, but Catherine was up for a challenge, so we decided to cut it ourselves. First, though, we routed it since other people were using the miter saw. Then it was time to cut. I was tempted to ask Catherine to cut all of it since I found the miter saw so incredibly intimidating, but, with her encouragement, I actually got used to the miter saw and am no longer terribly afraid of its sharpness and power!!!
After that, we planed and sanded our wood. We decided we would sand up to a 240 grit with the orbital sanders before assembly and then wait to sand to a higher grit by hand after assembly. We made sure to clean up our workspaces.
Our next steps were to cut out the handles and start assembling, so I started drilling things together while Catherine cut out the handles and sanded them down.
Once we finished assembling, we cleaned up our drilling space, then took the crate outside to sand it to 400 and add a tung oil finish! We also made sure to clean our outside workspace.
Our crate dried overnight, and then our project was complete!
Now let’s break down the cost:
- 3 pieces of 8’ long 1×4 pine lumber: 3(~$4) = $12
- 1 piece of 8’ long 2×2 pine lumber: ~$4
- 42 screws: ~$10 for 184 = $2.28 for 42
- Tung oil: ~$30 for 1 quart
- Disposable cloths for staining: ~$7 for 10 from Home Depot
- Labor: (7hrs)($7.25)(2 people) = $101.50 following Texas minimum wage
- Machine time: I found a couple of makerspaces in the area that give woodshop access to people who buy memberships, which cost $40-50 per month with no shorter time interval available for membership purchase.
Rounding up, the total price is $206.78.
Overall, this project was a fun and enlightening experience, and I made progress on my goal of getting over my fear of power tools!!
