Tuesday – Crating

Today I will crate Dan’s sewing cabinet up and get it ready for shipping. He says his wife is very excited and eager to receive it.

We start by cutting a 4x8 foot sheet to Styrofoam into strips. Then these strips get cut to length, fastened together with pieces of tape (no tape is to touch the cabinet – that would leave icky-sticky stuff in the finish). The Styrofoam is to create crush cushions, so where we have over hangs or knobs sticking out, multiple strips are stacked to acheive the depth needed. And, we need to end up with all surfaces being the same width and length to that they all touch the inside of the crate to prevent any movement as the truck bounces along the highways.

Then we wrap the whole thing in crate board. Crate board is a heavy duty, triple wall corrugated cardboard that is ½” thick. I used to use ¼” thick luan plywood in my crates, but the stuff is so heavy that it was driving up shipping costs. The crate board offers just as much protection but weighs much less.

The next step is to cut and apply the wooden frame. I could just use wide packaging tape to make an all crate board crate, but then our shipping costs would go up. Our rates are discounted by using a wood framed crate that will support the weight of some other object being placed on top of it in the truck. So, to keep your costs down, we do the wood-framed crate instead of a cardboard box.

When all the glue is dry and the screws are in I build a skid-base for the crate, attach it with screws so it will be easy to remove upon delivery and set the crate in the “chute” ready to be loaded onto our truck tomorrow morning for the trip to White Pine and Old Dominion’s freight dock. Not making them come get it saves you $75.00. Beside, our little mountain road scares the willies out of those big tough truck drivers!

The whole process takes a good full day. Plus some time tomorrow putting unused crate board and Styrofoam back up in the loft and setting the shop up for woodworking again and that’s after driving to White Pine. We charge you nothing for this day of work and the materials used, or for the trip to White Pine in the morning.

So, we’re done with this project. Next up will be Carol’s hickory tray table set.

Doug-Bob