Crate for drying Walnuts

If you have a walnut tree in your garden, you are blessed with a large quantity of nuts in autumn. Even if the harvests vary from year to year, it is still necessary to dry the nuts in "weak" years. Wooden crates with a grate at the bottom are suitable for this, which can also be stacked to save space. I assume that you can buy such boxes, but as I own a CNC machine there is no need for me to do this.

As with most projects, in addition to the actual requirements, I also take into account the available material and pay particular attention to the effective utilisation of the same. For these trays I had 10 mm beech plywood for the sides and 4 mm beech plywood for the arches. When designing the bottoms, I made sure to minimise waste and so I came up with the idea of 'fingerjoints', where two arches are created when you use the corresponding separating cuts. This also has the advantage that the milling time is considerably reduced. It has to be admitted, however, that the assembly of the 'open' ends is somewhat tedious. The external dimensions are designed so that 6 shelves can be made on standard 120 cm x 60 cm boards. Unfortunately, only 8 of the side parts (for 4 boxes) fit the format. To make setting up the CAM as easy as possible, all parts are identical, so you don't have to worry about mirroring elements or anything similar.

The stable sides are fitted with feet and matching recesses on the top. This allows air to circulate well on the one hand and the crates can be stacked perfectly and stably on the other. Handle holes make it easy to carry the crates, even when stacked completely.