I was impartial towards working with wood and hand tools until I began, then things took off from there. I am grateful to my partner for the project, Anika, who helped me conquer the crate in a good time.
We began by marking out the different measured lengths of wood for each side in pencil. Anika then started cutting them on the miter saw, and I aided her by clamping down the sides, a step we later found unnecessary, albeit useful.

After cutting the wood, I took the pieces and began sanding them. For me to see the effects of the sanding machine, I had to increase the grit of the sandpaper from 180 to 320. Upon doing research, I now see that the higher the number, the less course the paper is, which is likely why I could not feel the smoothness as desired. To be productive, while I was sanding, Anika took the finished sanded pieces of wood and routed all the edges with the routing machine. After which, the wood preparation was complete.

The next step was to assemble the box. Both Anika and I began by creating a frame each, which I found very fun. I was very comfortable with counter-sinking until my nail split the side of the frame. I had angled my nail slightly crooked, and so the nail ended up protruding out of the side of the box. To rectify this, I repeated the hole above the crooked one.

Then Anika inserted the bottom pieces of wood into her frame while I went back into the woodshop to cut the thinner supports to put inside the box. It was smooth cutting the wood, but the only issue with this oversight was that we had gotten the wood that no one wanted. Spray-painted in black and spit on some sides.
To rectify this, my initial thought was to strip the top layers off, but the machine was occupied, and the class time was passing by quickly. So instead, I used the vertical and horizontal sanding machines, which, with the exception of sanding down my nail, worked like a charm.

After this, my next task was to cut handles into the top frame. I wanted to be ambitious with this process, even without having any prior experience, and therefore chose to do semi hearts. I used the techniques from sowing last week and used a piece of paper to get symmetrical sides in the dimensions we were looking for, about 3 inches wide. I used a jigsaw to cut a rough triangle from the wood pieces, then cleaned up the cut with the circular sanding machine. Despite taking about 20 minutes and covering my entire body in sawdust, it worked well and only required a little bit of sanding with the handheld sander and sandpaper to get the desired finish.

The next day, when we returned, I assembled the last frame and placed it onto the box, and Anika resanded all the sides to prep it for the spray paint. We decided on an ombre effect, and I did a tester on a scrap piece of wood.

Our last step was trying to accomplish the ombre effect, which was a little challenging because we didn’t know we had to wait longer in between coats and layers, and so the paint was dripping on some sides.
Ultimately, though, the crate was a success, and we were both satisfied with the final product.

Cost analysis:
Plywood – $15.00 for a sheet (It would have to be bought as a long plank)
Spray paint- $48.00 (4 cans of spray paint*$12)
Sandpaper- $10.00 (Accounting for the 4-5 different grits used)
Labour- $50.00 ($25 per person. I would add more to this because it took about 5 hours in total, but the box was small.
Nails- $2.00
Equipment rental – $50.00 (At least 10 pieces of equipment were used. To buy them all would have been $100, but I just priced it as if they were rented at $5.00 an hour.)
Total Cost: $175.00
That is even expensive in my opinion, but I digress.