Tool Tote Project #1: Granizo

Hand Made Tote Screen Shot: https://a360.co/2I3YkF3  :  https://a360.co/2T4sxIi

Hand Made Tote Design: https://a360.co/2IgEPsK

Attached above are screen shots and the Fusion CAD model links for the Hand Made Tote Project.

I started making the tote based off of material readily available. Practically all of the pieces seen in model are based off of a single cut with the miter saw. Of course shaping the middle pieces took more work, but each component only required a single miter saw cut.

The first piece that I tried to shape was the middle handle piece, since I thought getting the grip was going to be the trickiest part. I was kind of right in the sense that I had  to redo it since I completely underestimated the size of a human hand. I tried to expand the slot with the jigsaw but the shape wasn't coming out as I expected it to...it was not completely straight, the ply was chipping off, and it looked as if the circles didn't meet the tangent of the upper lines. So I wanted to redo the slot piece and that is why there are two screenshots at the top of the page, the first was the "too small" slot, and the second is the corrected version. The picture to the right shows the messed up one in the front and the corrected in the back.

After that, I smoothed the grip with the router so it would be comfortable for the user. Setting up guides with double sided tape made routing straight really quick and easy. After that I needed to make the two pieces to overlay the already described piece above. Since it needed a very long straight cut, I set up another fence with more double sided tape to guide the jigsaw to the appropriate height. I realized that since the cut is the thickness of the material, I added a material thickness to the already stationed (seen to the left) cut to make the exact cut needed to nest the grip piece. And it worked! The next part was to shape the curve.

I laser cut a template to trace the curve on the already made piece. The template that was used is seen in the image to the right. After drawing the curve, I cut off the surroundings pieces with an approximate jigsaw cut, and cleaned it up with power sander. Now that I had one piece completely made, I use that entire piece as a template for the second. Throughout this project, I realized that the plywood was pretty cheap, and the ply would separate, looking pretty bad...

I made several wood glue repairs throughout the project since this was a reoccurring theme. The image to the left shows the first of many wood glue/clamp repairs. I wanted to use the biscuit joiner, so I did and combined the two smaller pieces to the middle grip piece, seen to the right. It was a fairly easy process that yielded a strong bond.

I wanted to connect the remaining pieces together while the biscuits were drying. So, I just lined up the frame and screwed the curved pieces into side supports. Once that was completed, there was more ply separation that occurred which needed more repairs. The image below shows the repairs with the side frame ready. 

While that dried I wanted to personalize the tote just a little bit by adding my name and a famous quote by a famous guy about something that would make people say, "Wow, that Bryan guy is deep". And then they would read who wrote it and say, "Oh, Bryan was just trying to be funny, I guess..."

I did a quick raster check on the same material to make sure it would print nicely on the ply. As you can see, on the right, the text came out sharp.

The final product was all screwed together which worked pretty well. The only thing is that since some of the plywood was warped, there is a tilt, and so all the edges don't match up perfectly...other than that it looks slick!

-Bvyan Granizo