Beer Crates

I made these for my brother in law for his birthday. He makes his own beer and I had observed his bottles being kept in the cardboard carriers that come from the store. So I decided to make him some crates to hold 6 cases or 144 bottles of beer.

The is my first project that I have done using finger joints made with the Shopnotes homemade jig. I am very happy with how the joints turned out except for some chip out on the back side of the cuts. Since the pieces have to be flipped end over end for the jig, each piece ended up having crisp edges on one side and ragged on the other. In retrospect, I should have used a thin piece of hardboard to back up the cuts.

The outer dimensions of the crates are 16 1/4” x 11” x 10 1/2”. This dimension allowed enough space space on the inside for a removable divider to keep the bottles separated in groups of 6. The hand hold cutouts are 1 1/4” x 4”. I used up almost a full sheet of 1/2” plywood to make the box sides. The bottoms are are rabbeted into the sides and made with 3/8” plywood.

The finish is tung oil and the personalization was done using the acetone transfer method.