I did this project with Raymond Xu!
For the past few days, we have been taking our time to construct a wooden crate that we feel turned out quite well. We started off by cutting our own pieces of wood for the crate. We then proceeded to sand the wood until it was very smooth.
After this, we built individual layers of the crate. We figured that this would allow for the individual layers to have more even spacing and angles than if we were to attempt to construct them around the other parts of the crate. Another advantage we had from doing this order of construction is that we could more easily route the edges of the box, once each layer was constructed. We discovered some very nice ways of creating proper spacing between the wood pieces including my favorite, placing our students IDs and random gift cards in between the base planks to ensure they don’t move.
Before constructing the top layer, we used a compass and the bandsaw to create perfectly round cutouts to better hold the box from. Then, we were able to route just the inner parts of the handles prior to construction so that they were smooth and rounded.
After we routed the whole box, sanded one more time, and screwed together the individual pieces of wood, we were ready for finishing the box.
We applied a pre-stain conditioner to the box. We both thought that the orange color that this created was nice so we left that on as the final layer. We let the crate dry and then we were done. (And we cleaned our workspace).
Overall, I think the most important things I learned were all of the different techniques (countersinking screws, placing blocks between layers to space them, etc.) that could be used to make woodworking look cleaner.
Cost analysis:
1 piece of 2×2 lumber – $3 (price for full length piece of lumber)
2 pieces of 1×4 lumber – $3 each = $6
Handful of woodscrews – $10 (this is about 1/4 the price of a full box of woodscrews)
Tool “rental” (drills, saws, etc.) – $20 (this is an estimate of the fair rate of renting these tools)
Labor cost – ($10/hour)(8 hours) = $80 (per partner so $160 total)
Wood Pre Stain Conditioner – $3 (only accounting for portion used)
Total cost: $202 (with combined labor costs)
This is expensive but would be significantly cheaper if we were making multiple of these (as you would get discounts for larger material quantities and wouldn’t end up wasting half a piece of lumber.
