Let’s see how to make a crate box out of wooden slats. And in this case I am going to use chestnut wood that I had recycled from some old doors.
You can see in the video all the steps I followed, and how I use my homemade woodworking tools to thickness the wood and to cut all the necessary pieces.
The structure of this box is very simple, with horizontal wooden slats nailed and glued to other vertical slats that go inside at the corners.
The two most important parts to get the crate box right are:
1.- Cut the wooden slats accurately so that the ones that have to be equal are equal. I use my table saw and cross cut sled to cut the wood slats accurately.
2.- Make the templates to join the slats that form the sides of the crate box. With these templates we get the sides of the box to be exactly the same two by two. The two long sides will be identical, and the two short sides will also be identical.
To join all the pieces together I use some carpenter’s glue and a nail gun. The nail gun is very useful for these kind of projects, and makes things much easier for us.
A detail that I was told on my YouTube channel is that this crate box would look better if I put the short sides inside the long sides. I put the short sides in the outside because I had the impression that if I put them on the inside the crate box would look narrower than it is. I could just change the overall dimensions of the crate box.
I use some wood paste to hide the nails (although in this kind of box they might look better if visible), a bit of sandpaper and varnish, and that’s all.
In the end I get a pretty nice wooden box that I’m sure I’ll find a good use for, but not in the workshop. I think it will look great on my desk next to my computer.