The Crate Saga is Over, at My End.

[In The Ten Ring]

A few months ago a fellow member in Canada asked for help getting door skins he planned to buy from Hot Rod Todd home to him in his country. Since I'm just a few score miles from Todd, I volunteered. It took a lot longer than I thought to build these and a whole lot longer to get them shipped, but today, a 20 foot box truck showed up and the driver and I loaded them up!

Since the forum member (I forget his nickname) was counting on me, I just had to come through. I had to expect that during shipping, things will get abused. I bought a fender from a member here two years ago and it came in a cardboard box, badly dented. I wasn't about to let that happen to someone else if I could help it.

All sides are covered on these and the door skins cannot move at all. Even upside down they will not budge a millimeter. Crate 1 came in at 125 pounds and Crate 2 is 115 pounds. A great deal of the wood I was able to just give him, as I pick it up whenever I see it tossed out.

The driver did say these "were the best built crates he has ever seen."

[flashed]

Now that is what I call pride in shipping ,good for you .

[toolboxchev]

Good on you for being both a leader, and a great guy. The world needs more folks like yourself.

We, especially me, are glad you are part of us!

[chewychevy67]

I can't wait to get these. Thanks for all your help. People like you do make this board a good place. I appreciate all your help.

[cleszkie]

Did you have to pull a building permit and submit plans for review to the city engineering department for that? Looks great. If that came to my house, I would make a coffee table out of it and put it in my living room!

[cypressbog]

Wow, fantastic packaging!!

[72 Super]

That is a great job you did for sure. They aren't going to be also move at all. It is great to see a member help another member out.

Ray

[Mrturner1]

Just a couple weeks ago a member was gonna pick up a gear vendor for me while he was in Arizona and bring it back to California, can't beat this site for great guys.

Awesome job on the crates!

[Grumpy old man]

2x6 construction , Wow talk about over built , heck add a few doors and windows and those crates are almost the size of my log cabin ,Lol

[In The Ten Ring]

Thanks guys.

The crates are all square to within 1/8 of an inch.

At first I planned to just frame the crates, using the 2x6's and 2x4's, leaving the sides open. However, I thought "what if they get stabbed by an incompetent fork lift driver or something sits or gets dropped on them?" I did overdo it with Crate 1, using 1x4's across the bottom. Crate 2 got 5/8th inch plywood across its bottom.

I hate screwing into end grain, as it is inherently a weak screw hold. To avoid that on the sides, I added wood bars across the inside bottom that the side screws into. This isn't visible in these pics. Crate 2 I planned for the bottom plywood to leave space for the 1/2" sides, you can see that in one pic. I nearly went with thicker for the sides, but since I had the 1/2" and I never use it for anything, I could just give him all the 1/2" plywood and not have to buy any.

Since my garage is full of parts, boards, junk, and my own immobile truck, these had to be turned on their ends and carried in and out of the side door and stored on their sides. In the beginning I could carry each crate alone and then on a dolly but eventually, they'd get too heavy and I'd have to get a neighbor to help. In doing so I learned that one of my neighbors was in a rock band in the '60 & '70's, opening for Jemi Hendrix and Ted Nugent and had the same manager as Ted. He said Ted was just as crazy about hunting then as he is now. The other neighbor that helped advised me on the tie downs....that's not one rope that's one rope cut into three pieces (ends burned to prevent fraying). Any two of the ropes could break and the piece will still be tied down. He showed me how tying the rope pieces together would take up all the slack. He learned that in the Merchant Marine, when his cargo ship was freighting everything from Seabees to bombs over to Vietnam.

The door skins were very dirty, 40 or so years of sitting in some old warehouse.....in order to get the tape to to stick to them (to hold the towels that cushion the edges) I had to clean them with water and wipe down.

The handles I removed once those were loaded onto the shipper's liftgate. I figured they'd just be moved by forklift anyway (which I planned for). The "THIS SIDE UP" stencil I drew out on graph paper and cut out of a piece of cardboard with a carpenter knife. I figured that a marking would really make these look professional. I used red for Crate 1 but then worried the forklift driver might be colorblind so I used black for Crate 2.

I did sign my name to each crate....a little bit of pride I guess. All of the wood is worth keeping, along with all of the screws. Wood is great for future projects and blocking and any garage should have a good stock of scrap.

I did send an email "manufacturer's instructions for crate opening" to the board member. It would be hard to remove the door skins if not done in the reverse of assembly. He'll need three different screw driver bits......I wanted to be all the same but Lowe's didn't have the proper lengths.

[dirtyjim]

good work there.

[Overdriven]

Very nice work. I know all too well the pitfalls of shipping. Nothing like getting a box creased in the middle and seeing your quarter panels in the same condition. Then fighting with the driver that you're not going to accept it. Shouldn't surprise me as I've been behind the scenes of various shippers. The worst is the local ABF Freight depot. Those guys rush around for 20minutes when a truck comes in, beating stuff up, leaving a trail of broken wood and paint chips scraped off the forklifts only to go back to sitting around waiting for the next truck to roll up. Every single garage door is bent up, every single yellow guard post on either side of each door is scraped up and leaning at an angle, it's ridiculous.

Your local USPS branch isn't any better though. There's always a person surrounded by a half circle of large bins 4-5 rows deep on one side and a pallet or 2 of packages on the other. One by one that person scans a package off the pallet then throws them into one of the bins in that half circle to sort them. 3 point range range with the box marked fragile is just another day for them.