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I play for the scenario paintball team Pub Crawling http://www.pubcrawling.org . We have more than 20 members on the team and with a name like Pub Crawling we drink a lot of malted beverages after our games. We travel all over the United States to play paintball and have traveled to Scotland and England for events. In order to keep up our supply of beverages and meet the demands of the team several members have begun home brewing beer. Naturally bringing a full keg setup for after the game isn't always a reality, and sometimes I just want to have a few beers put in long term storage to try my hand at aging them. Though mostly aging beers is more a matter of testing my patience.
What I really wanted was something that was fully enclosed and wouldn't have a lid that would come open if tipped over or rolled around in the back of a truck or trailer without anyone noticing. Also it had to have dividers for the bottles and I didn't want it to weight a ton or cost an arm and a leg.
I looked around for plans to make wooden bottle crates to hold beer and couldn't really find what I was after. So I incorporated a few of the best ideas that met my needs from all of them and this is what I came up with.
Tools:
Table Saw (though a radial arm saw or skill saw could do it too)
Drill
Material:
1- 1"x12"x8' Pine Board $10
2- 2'x2'x 1/4" birch panel $10
Glue
Screws
3/8" Hemp Rope
Assuming you have some rope, glue and screws on hand $20 is enough to make two crates with very little waste wood left over. These crates each hold 12 bottles and are sturdy enough to take a beating yet aren't so heavy that one person can't carry two of them at the same time. I will also add that I am no where near good enough a woodworker to make anything super precise like cabinets or 90 degree angles. So if I can make these crates so can you. It took me about 3 hours to make two crates including the time it took to take all these pictures too. I'm sure someone who has even the slightest clue on what they are doing could make them even faster.
What I really wanted was something that was fully enclosed and wouldn't have a lid that would come open if tipped over or rolled around in the back of a truck or trailer without anyone noticing. Also it had to have dividers for the bottles and I didn't want it to weight a ton or cost an arm and a leg.
I looked around for plans to make wooden bottle crates to hold beer and couldn't really find what I was after. So I incorporated a few of the best ideas that met my needs from all of them and this is what I came up with.
Tools:
Table Saw (though a radial arm saw or skill saw could do it too)
Drill
Material:
1- 1"x12"x8' Pine Board $10
2- 2'x2'x 1/4" birch panel $10
Glue
Screws
3/8" Hemp Rope
Assuming you have some rope, glue and screws on hand $20 is enough to make two crates with very little waste wood left over. These crates each hold 12 bottles and are sturdy enough to take a beating yet aren't so heavy that one person can't carry two of them at the same time. I will also add that I am no where near good enough a woodworker to make anything super precise like cabinets or 90 degree angles. So if I can make these crates so can you. It took me about 3 hours to make two crates including the time it took to take all these pictures too. I'm sure someone who has even the slightest clue on what they are doing could make them even faster.
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Signing UpStep 1Cutting grooves for top and bottom
The first step is to cut the grooves for the top and bottom panels. Using a dado blade in my table saw I set the groove to start at a 1/2" from the edge of the board and to be roughly 1/4" deep. I ran the board through twice so that there was a groove for both the tops and bottoms. I actually chose to use the nicer side of the board as the inside and used the really knotted, pitted and banged up side as the outside. People spend a lot of time trying to stress a board to make it look rustic, I chose boards that were pre-rusticed.
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I happen to have some chalkboard paint that we used to paint my son's closet door - it works great. I am making a few of these crates for my brother in law for Christmas and i have been wondering how to decorate them a little bit so that my sister isn't pissed at me for sending her husband home with 2 "ugly" beer crates.
(please note I don't mean to call these ugly. far from it - i think they're lovely as will my brother in law, but my sister is already miffed at the amount of beer "junk" in their house so i'm afraid i'm going to need to "pretty" them up a bit)
Anyway - i was thinking of laser engraving but I don't really have any good ideas for decorations so i have been racking my brains. chalkboard paint it is!!!
As a side note, we also purchased some magnetic paint and dry erase paint for my office. I painted magnetic paint and then the dry erase on top. Works fairly well - but nowhere near as close to a magnetic dry-erase board as the chalkboard paint is to a real chalkboard.
Either way - good idea!
They aren't wining any beauty pageants but they do have a rustic farmhouse type of appeal to them. Home brewers tend to go for that kind of stuff.
If someone wanted to go all out they could source some nice oak or walnut instead of scrap pine. Use some miter joints and add a little clear stain to protect them and away you go. But that would probably drive the price up a little more than $10/box and take more than a couple of hours to make them.
I agree though, they do need some finishing touches to them. I like the chalkboard paint idea, possibly on the lid. I'm still leaning to vinegar/steel wool aging. I'm also rolling around the idea of countersinking the screws and using a dowel to cover the holes.
thanks again for all of your help - i'll be sure to let you know when i finish my set of crates.
you've got my vote - i hope you win the engraver!
http://andy-projects.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-12-09T15:01:00-06:00&max-results=7
Really nice way to provide the brew!
When you cut off the top edge of one of the end pieces, you could have saved the cut-off and glued it to the edge of the [sliding] top panel. It would've completed the square top edge and looked nice. Then you also wouldn't've needed the finger hole to open the lid with.
Also, are your rope handles long enough so they can cross each other over the top of the box so each box can be carried upright with one hand?
I spent a lot of time playing around with the length of the rope handles. I tried crossing them over the top like you suggested and while it worked, it wasn't very comfortable. So I opted for shorter handles for two handed carry. I carried two fully loaded crates, each in one hand and just by one handle. Carrying them that way wasn't difficult and even fully loaded they are not that heavy.
Nice job, overall.
There area a lot of little tricks like that of which I am sure more experienced wood workers know of.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Box-Joint-Box/
But you can never have too much beer on hand or too many ways to conveniently store it!
I made four of them so far, two for aging and two for general transportation. I may make another four with some of the improvements listed here at some point in the future.
This would be saw specific so check the manual. I know that some of the smaller portable "contractor" style saws often have short arbors.
Worse comes to worse you could set up your fence and make two passes 1/8" off with a regular blade that has a wide kerf. That should cut a 1/4" wide slot with no issues.
I've never made mead but it is high on my list. To my understanding it can take quite a while for mead to fully ferment and condition as well. What kind of mead do you make?
Mead can be drinkable in 6 months, but can age similar to good red wines (sometimes longer is better, I've heard 10 years!) My attempts tend toward 13% alcohol by volume, but fermentation has seemed to take a month to a month and a half, versus the two to three weeks for wines and beers. Some recipes claim 90 days to drinkable, but I haven't tried those.
Clarifying is the part that takes the longest, but I've come to the thought that letting it clear "naturally" instead of adding clarifyers gives me a better idea of when it is really ready to drink. 4-6 months everything settles out and it is clear and tasty!
I should do a mead 'ible for my next batch...
would love to learn more
Looks good. Will have to try it I think :).
Really nice idea
Let me know if you're ever in the Triangle area in North Carolina and I'll come play paintball with you guys! Shoot me, beer me :-)
This was a super easy project. The crates could use some decorating, either from laser engraving the lids or staining them.
I had considered doing a grey stain or perhaps vinegar/steel wool deal to make them look weathered.
Not having a laser engraver myself if I had to decorate these boxes I'd likely go with a sprayed stencil pattern as it is a classic method of marking crates. Look into a material called Frisket film if you decide on the stencil route. properly cared for I've gotten dozens of uses out of a single stencil made of Frisket and plain spray paint.
You may want to investigate sand tanning as well. You could probably make a stamp with Styrofoam or something to impress into sand then heat sand and tan the wood on top of the burning sand. Sand tanning could possibly be a cheap and easy way to get somewhat of a wine box branded look. Might be a bit iffy a way to go though. Would largely depend on your barbecuing skills how it turned out. Read experiment on some scrap wood before attempting this on anything you cared about!