DIY Bottle Crates?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Evan!

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 9, 2006
Messages
11,835
Reaction score
115
Location
Charlottesville, VA
I was watching Cinderella Man the other day, and there was a scene where they were bringing in a bunch of beer in old wooden crates. It got me thinking...these reused commercial beer boxes where I keep my beer are ugly and are a PITA, especially if they get wet. I have simply a sh*tload of scrap wood in my shop that could be put to good use...

Now, of course, I could (and will) draw up my own plans in Autocad, but does anyone know of or have plans for such a thing? Man, it'd be sweet to have stacking wooden pressure-treated crates with luan dividers.
 
I've looked into doing this a little, but with most of my ideas for projects, I never get around to doing it. It sounds like fun though. If you need your brewery name screenprinted on the wooden boxes, just let me know!
:mug:
 
Those are cool but I would want my sides high enough so that they were stackable given the various sizes of bottles that I inevitably use.
 
weetodd said:
Those are cool but I would want my sides high enough so that they were stackable given the various sizes of bottles that I inevitably use.

My thoughts exactly.

Not to mention all the work that goes into toothing those corners. Ugh. I'd just as soon use mechanical fasteners (corner braces and/or screws) than spend all those hours toothing. I'm not trying to win a beauty contest...just want 'em to look nice. I'd miter and glue them before I toothed 80 corners.
 
iamjonsharp said:
I've looked into doing this a little, but with most of my ideas for projects, I never get around to doing it. It sounds like fun though. If you need your brewery name screenprinted on the wooden boxes, just let me know!
:mug:

ohhh... no, a GIANT METAL STAMP you heat to a GLOWING RED and BURN your logo into it!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!! :rockin: :rockin: :rockin:
 
This is a cool idea and something I've thought of doing myself, but I've decided that my long term brewing will be mostly involve kegging. Now if I can just save up enough scratch to buy some kegs. :D
 
ohiobrewtus said:
This is a cool idea and something I've thought of doing myself, but I've decided that my long term brewing will be mostly involve kegging. Now if I can just save up enough scratch to buy some kegs. :D

yeah so hard to save when myour building that awesome bar in the basement:rockin:
 
I've got a dovetail jig comming so I can do this myself.

I'm thinking of chalkboard paint on the bottom of the lid and grooves so I can stand it up on the case.
When I router the handles I won't go all the way thru so light doesn't make it thru. I was also thinking of cutouts on the bottom to allow carrying from the bottom, so when you place it down you don't crush your fingers.

You could sand the edges with an orbital to give it an antiqued look.


Yeah, I've given it a little thought.
 
D*Bo said:
I've got a dovetail jig comming so I can do this myself.

I'm thinking of chalkboard paint on the bottom of the lid and grooves so I can stand it up on the case.
When I router the handles I won't go all the way thru so light doesn't make it thru. I was also thinking of cutouts on the bottom to allow carrying from the bottom, so when you place it down you don't crush your fingers.

You could sand the edges with an orbital to give it an antiqued look.


Yeah, I've given it a little thought.
I'm not much of a woodworker, but I'd be cool with kicking some money your way in order to get about 6 cases... Local so we could work something out, please PM me. Also, I could be a helper or the guy that picks up supplies at the store, etc.
 
D*Bo said:
I've got a dovetail jig comming so I can do this myself.

I'm thinking of chalkboard paint on the bottom of the lid and grooves so I can stand it up on the case.
When I router the handles I won't go all the way thru so light doesn't make it thru. I was also thinking of cutouts on the bottom to allow carrying from the bottom, so when you place it down you don't crush your fingers.

You could sand the edges with an orbital to give it an antiqued look.


Yeah, I've given it a little thought.

I was actually thinking about building a couple tomorrow if the baby permits. I was planning on cutting rabbits into the tops and bottoms so you can stack them and they will lock into each other.
 
In 2005, the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas, who make Shiner beer, commissioned a special crate, kind of like you described, for their anniversary edition. An article about that edition is located here http://shiner.com/shiner_news/?p=7.
The wood crates had the Shiner logo burned into the sides of them.
shiner_box.jpg


The slats on the top of the box are actually the underside of the lid for the box,
who ever took the picture put the lid on the box upside down.


I know the company that made the boxes for Shiner, and have contacted them to see how much it would cost to get just a blank box made up with no logo or anything.
 
gimmie dimensions.... I've got a jigsaw and a table saw. Hell, i'd even use screws instead of nails. that isn't a very complicated box at all.
 
rabidgerbil said:
In 2005, the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas, who make Shiner beer, commissioned a special crate, kind of like you described, for their anniversary edition. An article about that edition is located here http://shiner.com/shiner_news/?p=7.
The wood crates had the Shiner logo burned into the sides of them.
You can see a picture of one here http://www.seattlefusion.net/truck/shiner_box.jpg

I know the company that made the boxes for Shiner, and have contacted them to see how much it would cost to get just a blank box made up with no logo or anything.

Any word back?
 
I use old soda wooden crates, but in BYO a while back there was an ad from this guy who made his own. Search it in BYO and you'll see his phone number. his website doesn't work anymore so he may be out of business but if you get a hold of him he may give you dimensions. They looked very well made. I never bought any because they were kinda expensive. They were called Patriot Crates
 
It looks like it is going to be some where between $15 and $20 per crate. I am still negotiating the details, so I can not say what the exact price will be yet. I know that I will be picking up about 20 of them for myself, and may approach a few of my LHBS owners to see if they might be interested in picking up a few to see if they will sell. I figure, those bottles that I did not get for free from friends, or off of Craigslist, I paid about $11 a case for, so it is worth it to me to pay some more to keep them safe, clean, organized, and easy to transport.

I currently have one of these boxes, and it is awesome. Strong, fairly light, durable, made out of pine, has a nice classic look to it, and protects my bottles. The only thing I hate more than broken glass all over the place is my hard work draining away with that broken glass. Now that is truly abusing alcohol.
 
The biggest expence in making the box's is going to be the plywood used. He used 3/4" Birch plywood (furniture grade) which is like 50.00 a sheet. And you may only be able to get 4 box's out of a sheet. But those are really cool. Maybe next time i can perminitly borrow some lumber from a job i may build me some. my card board box's are starting to fall apart.
 
autoferret said:
The biggest expence in making the box's is going to be the plywood used. He used 3/4" Birch plywood (furniture grade) which is like 50.00 a sheet. And you may only be able to get 4 box's out of a sheet.

That is why I am not as fond of that design, the bottles are not fully protected, because the materials are too expensive to build a full box.
 
Evan! said:
My thoughts exactly.

Not to mention all the work that goes into toothing those corners. Ugh. I'd just as soon use mechanical fasteners (corner braces and/or screws) than spend all those hours toothing. I'm not trying to win a beauty contest...just want 'em to look nice. I'd miter and glue them before I toothed 80 corners.
It's called a box joint. If you were trying to win beuty contest, you'd use a half blind dovetail joint. But the box joint is a LOT easier to make. If you have a table saw, it's not hard to build a box joint jig with scrap lumber. Then you just through the two bords that make up your corner in the jig, make 5 or siz passes with your dado blade, and whala it's a corner. Doesn't take long really, once you got the jig built.
 
autoferret said:
The biggest expence in making the box's is going to be the plywood used. He used 3/4" Birch plywood (furniture grade) which is like 50.00 a sheet. And you may only be able to get 4 box's out of a sheet. But those are really cool. Maybe next time i can perminitly borrow some lumber from a job i may build me some. my card board box's are starting to fall apart.
Home Depot has a cheeper birch plywood. It's about $28 a sheet. It's not furniture grade, but it would do well for a project like this. I haven't used it though, so I don't know how many voids are in it.
 
I know that lowes has that too. most of the lumber i've got from both hasn't been much different. no to many voids at all. my biggest complant w/ both places is the quality of the 2x4 and 2x6. I've started shoping at 84 lumber. i'll check there on price per-sheet. i need to get a piece for my other project, a poker table that i'm going to be building for the bar.
 
1215072004.jpg

Made these today. Looks like I can get ten out of a sheet of plywood. Use masonite for the bottom. Since it only holds 12 I wasnt worried about the bottom being super strong.

I dont know if you can tell but they do lock into each other when stacked.

So $30 for the birch plywood and $20 for the masonite puts me at $5 a crate.

I wasnt going to mess with box toothing or dove tails. Yeah it will look nice but some wood glue and a few finishing nails is strong enough.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top