Wooden Crate on Bicycle

My daughter has a new bike... great color. However one thing is missing; a nice crate in front of her steer to place her backback. Easy, especially when filled with loads of books when paddling to school, and of course back home.

So what to do? ask daddy to use his tools and make a crate yourself... By the way who wants a plastic crate... so dinosauric. The real youth wants something.. well... sustainable ...

It happens that I've a lot of wood at the back of my house, old wooden parts of my last building activity. A pity to trow them away as they are 90 years old or more.

First a simple sketch (see picture). My daughter did the measuring I the first idea, together we decided what to do next.

What do you need?

> bottom: 2x wooden parts measuring 35.5 cm x 10.5 cm, thickness of my wood 2.1 cm... however thinner is ok too / our wood was equiped with grooves and tongeus... so easy fit together (if they would have been new and not used for 90 years)

> side parts long: 4x (37.5 x 10.5 cm x 2.1 cm)

> side parts small: 4x (25 x 10.5 cm x 2.1 cm)

> bottom parts to hold crate steady on bike: 2x (6.5 cm x 10.5 cm)

> 4 wooden sticks for the corners(2x2x25 cm)

> nails: 3 cm at least (I used left overs)

> 10 screws to fasten 3 cm at least

> wood glue

> electricity wire

> paint (base is greyisch), the nice colored flowers is up to your imagination.

1) safety first, so where gloves if you are not familiar with all the nasty sharp tools (saw, sizzles, etc.). Its not cool to have scars on weird places, or even worse miss fingers or other parts of your hand.

2) prepare all wooden planks, use measure and rule, hooks and start sawing

3) use sandpaper, planer etc to get rid of splinters and uneven look

4) start with assembling the proper parts, I started with the bottom part and created the first corner. The bottom part is constructed of two tongue and groove parts glued together. As we used old wood some refurbishing is needed to make it work.

5) attach the long side and short side together with nails (2 will do),

6) attach the corner stick as shown in the figure, again 2 nails to the long side part en 2 nails through the stick to the short side part... CHECK THAT THE CONSTRUCTION FITS ON TOP OF THE BOTTOM PART, so the stick rests on the bottom part and the long and short part are constructed around the outher edges of the bottom part... to honest have a look at the pictures as you will probably better understand the construction.

7) now attacht the other long and short part to the bottom

8) ensure enough glue between the parts, I also used some screws in case the nails where keeping stuff together good enough.

9) next step is easy, construct the second layer of wood parts to the stick, take care to use nails from the parts to the white corner sticks, use glue and use nails

10) at the bottom of the crate two small planks are made that fit around the bottom of bicycle fork (see picture). The back part of the crate is fitted with simple electrical wiring (rope might have worked too), to attach it to the bicycle fork. This part should be tailormade to the type of bicycle you have.

11) two things are missing: paint the crate in your favourable color and decorate it with nice figures, colors etc. - thats another instructable I will add later on.