This week once again tested skills I did not possess before beginning in the form of cutting wood, drilling and screwing a box together, and sanding and staining said box. Sarah and I worked together to accomplish something neither of us had ever attempted, and I had a great time!
We first decided to cut our own wood. We set up the machine with a carefully-placed block so that we could quickly cut our lumber planks down to the correct and consistent sizes we needed. We sanded the splinters off of these cut pieces, and we got to work drilling and screwing the frames of our crate together.
Me drilling a pilot hole into our first frame corner
After getting our three frames assembled, I routed the sides of our frames. Due to screw placement and box aesthetic, we decided to use the table router to round the top and bottom edges of two frames and the top edge only of the bottom frame. We assembled the base planks to the bottom frame, then attached the vertical supports. We decided to screw two diagonal vertical supports into the bottom to frames, slide the third frame around these vertical supports and screw it in, then attach the last two vertical supports to all three frames. We read some blog posts from last year describing the difficulty with sliding the top frame over all for vertical supports, so we decided to slide it over the first two supports only.
Our box after we screwed in two vertical supports to the bottom two frames, slide the third frame over the top, and screwed it into place.
After assembling the whole box, we went over the entire box with the orbital sander using 60-grit sandpaper. We repeated this with a 120-grit sandpaper until we were satisfied with the smoothness of the wood.
Finally, we used the dark walnut stain to stain our crate. I think it turned out really well for our first crack at it!
The final product
In retrospect, we should have thought about the order in which to sand, round corners with the router, and stain. Nooks and crannies were difficult to sand and stain after the box was assembled, and some of our corners that had screws near the edge were difficult to round with the router. Next time, we should think of a systematic step-by-step approach to complete each of these steps to the best of our ability.
| Cost Type | Cost | Price | Source | Quantity | Total |
| Materials | 1×4 Board | $0.44/ft | Lowe’s.com | 202.5 in | $7.34 minus savings from bulk purchases |
| 2×2 Furring Strip | $0.42/ft | Home Depot | 44 in | $3.35 minus savings from bulk purchases | |
| Screws | $0.04/screw | Home Depot | 48 screws | $2.00 | |
| Sand Paper | $1.74/unit | Home Depot | 2 units | $3.49 | |
| Labor | Woodworking Operator | $15/hour | Indeed.com | 8 hours | $120 |
| Prototyping Engineer (You!) | $36.50/hour | Bureau of Labor Statistics | 1 hour | $36.50 | |
| Overhead | Facility Cost (Wood Saw) | $10 hour | Home Depot | 8 hours | $80 |
| Facility Cost (Drill) | $4 hour | Home Depot | 4 hours | $16 | |
| Facility Cost (Orbital Sander) | $3.25 hour | Home Depot | 3 hours | $9.75 | |
| Quality Control | $21/hour | Bureau of Labor Statistics | 1 hour | $21 | |
| Design | Engineering and Development | $0 – Open source wood crate design manual | USDA | N/A | $0 |
| Iterations | $278.43/crate | USDA | 2 crates for testing per iteration | $556.86 | |
| Misc. | Waste and Scrap | ~$0.43/ft | Home Depot | 2.5 in of 1×4, 28 in of 2×2 | $1.09 |
| TOTAL | $857.38 |
