I set out for my weekend project with the simple goal of making a dish to raise my dog’s water and food dishes a few inches off the ground. This was to help her with a recent injury. I wanted something simple and fast so I settled on making a box with a divider in the center:

I did this for a couple reasons. First, it was pretty straightforward as a design. Second, it was a chance to practice a few things like butt joints for the corners at a good right angle, and using a router with a template. The template is to add handles to the side pieces which will make the box slightly more interesting and also help us move it around and away from our playful toddler. I also thought that a template of a basic handle may be a convenient thing to have around for future projects. Therefore, the first step I took towards making this box was to ignore it and make the template of a handle. This is where I get to the point of what I learned in this simple project:

Order of operations

For the template, I knew I ultimately wanted the end result of a reasonable sized piece of 1/4″ MDF with a handle cut out of it. Something which could be easily clamped to another piece of wood, traced, and routed with a template bit to produce a quick handle. Naturally, I dove into this process with a simple plan:

1) Trace the handle of the 2′ level I was copying over to the MDF.
2) Drill pilot holes with drill. Be done with drill.
3) Cut out most of handle and the smaller piece of MDF from the larger sheet of MDF. Be done with jigsaw.
4) Clamp level back to the MDF and use router with template bit to get a matching handle. Be done with router.

This seemed like a logical plan. Do everything I could with one tool, then move on to the next. Luckily, around this moment:

I realized this wasn’t a very good plan. Once I made that other cut with the jigsaw, I would be left with the general size of MDF template that I wanted but would also be facing the much more difficult tasks of cutting the bulk of the handle out with a jigsaw as well as clamping it back to the level for finishing with the router. Thankfully I noticed at this step so I could stop, finish the handle completely with the jigsaw and router, and then make the final cut to remove the template of the sheet of MDF. This made the whole process much easier to perform and safer. All this is to say, consider your order of operations before diving into any series of cuts or work. I’m sure this is obvious to some of you reading, but it did not occur to me until just in time.

The other thing I noticed, more as a note to myself for future projects, is that I really struggled to get the pieces aligned and clamped at 90 degrees so that I could join them with screws. I fumbled with the clamps for what seemed like too long a time in order to have them lined up at a good right angle. I don’t know right now if that was my choice of clamps or my general technique but it is something I will need to work on for future projects.

I think this project was a solid learning experience. Ultimately, the box does what I wanted it to, I now have a handle template for future projects, and a clear research topic for my next project.