Cleaned out the shop, time for a project

Hi Everyone,

Well, I think I've actually moved a mountain of stuff, dirt, and saw dust out of the shop. Gave away about 90% of the scrap wood I had and that really cleared out a lot of room. Also got rid of old wood stains, glue, and other assorted stuff I no longer need so it's time for the first project of the year.

I have a buddy in Florida who has a large collection of perfume and she needs a tray to display it all in. So after a chat online about this, I agreed to make her a large wooden tray out of pine. She also wants it stained grey and I'm attaching metal cabinet handles to make moving the whole thing a little easier. So here we go:

Photos

The tray is going to be 25" long by 18" wide and about 3" deep with metal handles on the ends. For the wooden frame and bottom I purchased an 8' long 1"x 4" pine boards and an 8' 5/16" x 4 1/2" section of pine lattice, along with 2 cabinet handles (see the photo below), and some brass wood screws:

From that I cut the parts for the frame- 2 18" parts and 2 25" long parts:

And here it is with just the pieces dry assembled on a work table:

I cut 3-25" lattice section for the bottom which were not wide enough to make a solid bottom so I took some scrap lattice from another project and cut 2-approximately 1 1/2" x 25" long additional parts to complete the bottom:

I spent some time looking at the frame and it looked a little too boxy for me so I cut 1/2" off all the boards. The sides a little lower but I think overall the tray dimensions look better:

Here's the handle-it is 6 1/4" long:

I placed the handles on top of one of the ends and didn't go for the appearance so I decided to inset the handles along the top edge of ends. It looks a little more finished that way. What I didn't want was just a box with handles on it:

To place the handles in this manner meant I had to cut the top 1/2: off and from that 1/2" strip, cut two beveled ends which will be glued to the ends with the handle placed between them. I also had to drill holes for the screws for the handles, which took a while: 

 The screws that will hold the handles on will be inset on the underside of the ends:

And here is an assembled end board with the handle just sitting on the top edge of the board. I think that looks better than just screwing the handle down:

I'm going to glue these beveled parts down to the boards and let the whole thing dry over night. Tomorrow I'm going to assemble and stain the tray so drop by the shop again on Wednesday to see how that comes out.

Stay tuned,
VW