At the beginning of this project, my plan was to start early to give myself time for things to go wrong but also to hopefully be a little creative as well. Overall it worked pretty well but a little stumble at the end I’ll get to later.

I started right after class and cut all my wood. I used the chop saw and added a clamp and a scrap block of wood to make a stop at my desired lengths. It worked really well except for two pieces where it slipped a little and my blocks were ~1/8″ too long and had to be sanded to length. In hindsight, cutting my wood early was smart as there was not enough wood for later groups and it definitely caused delays in progress.

Friday my goal was to sand all my pieces within reason so I wouldn’t get splinters when routing. I spent a long time on this using 80, 120, and then 320 grit sandpaper with the orbital sander. I finished some higher touch areas with the 660. On areas where the wood was already splitting I tried to hand sand away the pieces that would snag. Overall, I probably could have spent less time sanding at this stage as I ended up re-sanding most areas where I countersunk holes for the screws.

Sunday I came in with lofty goals of routing a slot into two of the short edge planks for handles. While I abandoned this for something much better suited to my skill level, I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to do it. The issue was less that I didn’t know how but more I had lots of tear out when I was testing.

I started with a test piece of wood trying to a) figure out which bit to use and b) how much material could be removed with each pass. I found quickly that I could only take small vertical/horizontal passes with the router bit I chose and even then I was getting a lot of tear-out at the end. Again looking back, the router bit was possibly on the duller side causing the issues I was seeing. Once I finally figured out how much material I could take off at a time, I started on my real part and overall was reasonably satisfied with my end result.

After finally finishing routing my handles, I decided against any further routing and keeping the other edges as square as possible. When I went to assemble the box, I found it would have been much easier with another set of hand to setup the pieces in the corner clamps. Again, I had some tear out along the edges when I used the 5/8″ drill bit to countersink. Through trial and error, I found it happened more often in cases where my initial holes were too close to the edge and when I ran the drill slower. You can see some of this below.

There were only a couple instances where I didn’t keep the drill in line with my wood and have some exposed screws. With my three frames done, this is when I had to very carefully sand down the two pieces I cut long for the bottom of my crate. Thankfully, I didn’t cut them down too much and managed to get a pretty level and tight fit.

Before I started my final assembly, I drilled my pilot holes with the drill press to make assembly a little easier as I navigated the drill on the inside of the box. I wish I has used the drill press for all my pilot holes so I wouldn’t have had any accidental exposed screws.

Once I was fully assembled, I decided to finish my crate with the matte sealant to preserve the natural look. After three separate spray coatings, I decided I was unsatisfied with the texture and ended up finishing my crate with beeswax. I wish I had just used the beeswax from the beginning even though

Cost estimate*

Raw Materials:
2 of 10' 1x4 = $14.36
1 of 8' 2x2 = $4.98
Box of 50 wood screws = $5.98
Beeswax = $9.98
Total = $35.32
Labor:
1 hr cutting
2 hrs sanding
3 hrs routing
4 hrs assembly
1.5 hrs finishing
$7.25/hr for 11.5hrs = $83.38

Machine/Facility:
11.5 hrs assuming $10/hr overhead = $115
Total cost for one average crate = $233.7

If I were to do this again, the time to route and assemble would go down and at a higher volume of production there would be less material waste.. 

*Prices based off Lowe's equivalent products to those used and Texas state minimum wage. I am assuming the items like drill bits, clamps, and all tools are included in the facility fee.