Building a crate

Above is a worksheet for designing a shipping crate. This was designed by my clever wife. I posted this some time ago here. I needed to build a crate today, so I photographed the process, for you. I began by filling in one of my crate maps that makes it easy to do the math, and avoids the screw ups that for some reason are really easy to do building crates. I then took it to my local big box retailer, and had them cut to the right size for me the two pieces of luan plywood and I found two eight foot 1 by 3's. The whole show cost me about twenty five dollars.

I threw them in the back of my car and when I arrived home I took them to my basement workshop.There is the crate map filled in and sitting on the luan.

Here I have cut the 1 by 3's with a handsaw. I could have used my table saw or chop saw but since they were small and I only had four cuts to make, it seemed easier just to do it by hand. Elapsed time, perhaps ten minutes. I did this by marking them off with the luan, no tape measure.

Here is my battery drill , I have put the luan onto the sides and ends with ordinary drywall screws. This makes a real tough package and it looks neat and professional. With all that is moving around the country this week I want my painting protected on its journey.

Below is the crate ready to accept the painting. I suppose it is twenty minutes of work . I am no carpenter and this is a crate, not a Sheraton highboy. But it will do for my purposes.

The painting I am shipping is a 30 by 40 and it is on oversized stretchers. If I had a frame the box would have to be deeper but since this is just the painting the depth is only 2 and 1/2 inches which is the width of a 1 by 3.

Tomorrow morning I will put the painting into the box and and secure it with some packing materials and screw the top on, again with drywall screws. I called my favorite shipper, ADCOM at 1.800.622.1147, but they told me, as I suspected that they could save me lots of money on a group of crates but not as much on one. So I called FEDEX and arranged a pickup with them for tomorrow. I like to use express shipping for paintings. They are valuable and I think they get better handling.

Tomorrow, back to 18th century etchings.