I've been working on a lot of small projects, like ESP based IoT sensors and lighting controllers and such, and one of the pain points for me is always the enclosure. I find it such a pain that I have a lot of devices in service naked.

For smaller projects like palm sized or less, I can usually easily find an appropriately sized enclosure for <$5, but for anything larger or which needs to be mounted to a wall or live outdoors, I end up spending a lot of time searching only to end up choosing an enclosure which costs several times more than the stuff it's enclosing.

So in the DIY spirit I decided to start building my own enclosures out of wood. I thought it would be easy, I mean how hard could it be to build a box? Well if you've never built a box before, give it a try and let me know how it goes.

I'm still working on my process with the aim of building enclosures using the bare minimum of tools and out of readily available commodity materials. I plan to make a youtube series out of it.

I'm mostly using the following materials:

1/4" lauan plywood ($17/sheet at my local hardware store)
11/16"x11/16" corner moulding (32 cents/foot at local store)
1/4"x1-1/2" lattice strips (33 cents/foot at local store)
bamboo skewers ($1 per 100 count at walmart)
wood glue
superglue
sandpaper
wood filler
paint

As for tools:

jigsaw (<$50 for a cheapie)
mitre box (<$15)
drill & bits (<$50 for cheapie)
combination square (~$10)
orbital sander (not required, <$50 for cheapie)

And that's about it I think. For around $100-150 investment in tools you can build an enclosure in the neighborhood of 8"x8"x4" using about $2 worth of materials when you would have otherwise paid $30 for a box from amazon. The cost of the enclosure doubles when you add a couple cable glands to it. Once you've cut up the whole $17 sheet of plywood and your $5 sticks of moulding and lattice, and maybe been through a can or two of $6 spray paint, you will have built more than 15 similar sized enclosures and recouped the cost of your tools 2-3 times over. And you still have the tools.

It does take maybe 30 minutes to an hour to put a box together, but I probably spend that much time searching amazon to buy one.

I know that relatively few people have a need for 15+ electronics enclosures, but some of us do, and I bet more of us will find other uses for simple (or more complicated) boxes if we already have the tools and materials hanging around.

Woodworking is a very common hobby, but it wasn't one of mine until I realized that I could combine it with one of the hobbies I did already have. So I guess the purpose of this thread is to see if any other tech folks around here do the same, or maybe inspire some of you to give it a try.

Some tips that I've picked up so far:

Wood glue is very strong, but not quite strong enough for simple butt joints on 1/4" plywood. I put little pieces of corner moulding on the inside of the box for added glue surface and side support, as well as to help keep things square which can be difficult when building relatively small boxes. A mitre box is handy for cranking these out, whether square cut for joining two sides or cut on 45 to join three sides in a corner.

If you get a cheap jigsaw, it will come with a cheap general purpose blade which you should throw directly in the trash. For a few dollars you can get a quality blade designed specifically for making clean cuts in thin plywood.

Bamboo skewers are great for making dowels or hinges.

Superglue is extremely handy where wood glue is not an option for whatever reason, or it can be used in combination with wood glue in cases where it's difficult to clamp your piece as the wood glue cures. In the case of small boxes with thin plywood, use wood glue on the long butt joints and superglue on your angle braces, or wood glue along most of the long butt joint and a dab of superglue on each end of it. In just a few seconds the bond will be strong enough to continue building without having to wait half an hour for a clamped bond to dry.