Next up in our list of new skills – woodworking! Sydney and I worked together to build a wooden crate. We sawed, sanded, drilled, sanded some more, and stained, until we had a beautiful tool box.

First, we needed to cut boards of various sizes for the sides and bottom of the crate, as well as the vertical posts inside. We worked as a group with our classmates to cut the various lengths we needed. We set up a scrap piece of wood on the saw to hold a consistent distance of either 11″, 12″, or 14.5″. I noticed some splinters at the ends, and the 2×2 was not in the best condition. It was pretty splintered, and not an even square all the way down. However, the cutting step itself was not too difficult.

On our next session, we sanded the tips of the boards to remove splinters, then assembled our frames. The first frame was the hardest, but once we got the hang of how we wanted to clamp everything to the table, the next two went more quickly. The process was surprisingly physically tiring, with the heat outside, holding the orbital sander, and bending down to get the right position for drilling. We also had to practice not putting too much pressure when making the countersink holes, otherwise we’d splinter the wood.

The following day, we continued assembling. We added three boards to form the bottom of the crate, and added two of the posts in opposite corners, mounting the remaining two frames to them. We used scrap wood as spacers to ensure we had even gaps between our layers.

Friday was a very dusty day. We attached the last two posts and spent a while sanding all our rough edges. The outside of the crate was pretty smooth, but there were parts on the inside that were still rough and difficult to reach with the orbital sander. We got sawdust everywhere! Clothes, shoes, hair, you name it, it had a thin tan layer of dust on it.

Finally, on Sunday, we stained our box with a dark walnut tint.

In general, this project was a good challenge for practicing new skills. Most things went very well. Drilling holes was pretty smooth, we only had a bit of splintering on a few counter sinks. Everything fit well together, especially because we confirmed that our frames would fit around the posts before attaching anything.

To make the process even better, we could have thought more carefully about the order of when to sand things. We realized we should have sanded our vertical posts before assembling because they really were very rough and it was hard to smooth them down once they were inside. On the other hand, we didn’t want to spend too much time sanding the outside before we’d finished drilling, because we wanted to go back and smooth over those connections. It would have been helpful to plan out which surfaces would be on the inside, sand those first, assemble, and then sand the outside.

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	1×4 Board	$3.32/8 ft	Home Depot	202.5 in	$7.00
	2×2 Board	$3.35/8 ft	Home Depot	44 in	$1.54
	Screws	$9.95/196 screws	Home Depot	48 screws	$2.44
	Sand Paper	$0.66/sheet	Home Depot	2 sheets	$1.32
Labor	Woodworking Operator	$18/hr	Bureau of Labor Statistics	7 hrs 45 mins	$139.50
	Prototyping Engineer or industrial designer	$37/hr	Bureau of Labor Statistics	30 mins	$18.50
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	Assume $1000 worth of equipment	FinModelsLab	Assume 10% of equipment costs	$100.00
	Quality Control	$18/hr	Bureau of Labor Statistics	30 mins	$9.00
Design	Engineering and Development	Assume this was already done in advance, since the material was selected for us and instructions were provided			$0.00
	Iterations	$18/hr for the woodworker to make changes	BLS	No major modifications, only one crate needed to be made	$0.00
Misc.	Waste and Scrap	$3.32/8 ft	Home Depot	5-6 inches of 1×4?	$0.25
				Total	$279.55