Kindergarten Block Box

In this video, I make a wheeled crate to store wooden toy blocks in a kindergarten classroom. To give my Kindergarten Block Box the illusion that it's made out of blocks, I used pine boards to make the side panels. I bought four 8-foot 1x6s and cut them roughly 23 inches long.

Next I installed a 3/16″ roundover bit in my router. It has a ball bearing that rides along the edges of the boards to give them a nice rounded edge.

I routed both edges of the boards, inside and out, then glued them into panels using a biscuit joiner. After the panels were dry, I cut the ends to a finished length of 22 inches and a 45-degree angle using a circular saw.

The bottom was made from 3/4-inch plywood, approximately 21-1/8 inches square. It fits into a 3/4″ dado that I cut into all four panels using my table saw with an adjustable dado blade. I don't recommend this blade; I suggest you buy a stacked dado set instead because they are much more accurate.

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Back to the biscuit joiner, I cut four biscuit slots into the mitered ends of the panels, then glued them up with a lot of clamps and let them dry overnight.

The next day, I softened all the edges and corners using the router and a random orbit sander.

Then I switched the router into a plunge base and used a 3/16″ radius point cutting bit to add vertical lines that make the boards look like blocks.

I attached four casters to the bottom and finished the piece with two coats of satin polyurethane, sanding lightly between coats.

TOOLS AND MATERIALS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE):
“These Hands Work Magic” T-shirt http://amzn.to/2eSfZ4K
Miter saw http://amzn.to/2vSRYlv
Router http://amzn.to/2xi5IGx
Router bit set http://amzn.to/2eSEUoT
Biscuit joiner http://amzn.to/2vTgdQe
Clamp-n-Tool Guides http://amzn.to/2wejDbI
Circular saw http://amzn.to/2xiiu82
Dado blade http://amzn.to/2eSKFTu
Random orbit sander http://amzn.to/2eSybLq
Plunge router base http://amzn.to/2wNyGg5
3/16″ point cutting bit http://amzn.to/2wNN0VY
Casters http://amzn.to/2gRpguu
Satin polyurethane http://amzn.to/2wO2CZF