Who doesn't love opening a loot crate? Not the gambling stuff (well it's still kind of gambling), but the ones in game. The ones that give shitty loot and guns you don't know how to play. The ones that make you end up with a bullet in your head 50% of the time because you drive into the middle of nowhere to get them.
Ok this will not be about stupid PUBG references, but thoughts and images of the process of making a "PUBG loot crate" for a friend of mine. For everyone unaware, it looks something like this:
Goal:
- build a small loot crate that vaguely resembles a PUBG loot crate
- make it from wood (3D printing would have been an option here, but I just don't like the look and feel too much for such a project)
- improve my wood finishing & painting skills
Not goals:
- make an exact copy of the in game loot crate from PUBG
- spend tons of time and money on it
- get 50 new tools
The box
While making a wooden box is indeed a skill to learn, having it heavily painted and modified made me not want to spend too much time on it. So I just bought one and sanded it smooth (not enough).
To add some depth to it, I went to add a bottom and some ridges to resemble the corrugated panels of metal containers. The ridges were cut by hand and everything was sanded (almost enough) before glue up. I used normal wood glue and clamps, no nails or screws. For alignment I had done some marking with pencil and it ended up fine. For a more precise project, I would have made small spacers and nailed everything in place with a nail gun (which I don't have). Getting rid of the glue with a wet cloth was crucial here, because hand sanding all the inside edges would not have been fun. Some wood filler was used to even out small imperfections, but I should have used even more here. In the finished product I can see where I did a good job and where I got lazy.
Each vertical piece was glued on as one, just because that seemed easier. Of course I had to split the box again, which was easy enough with a hand saw.
The paint
After the glue up, paint was up next. 3 coats of primer went on with sanding in between. 180 and later on 240. It still showed some wood pattern at this point, but I would not know how to improve this. Not buy cheap ass primer? Sand more? Even more coats?
After that, I sprayed it with red paint and also lightly sanded with a 320 grid sanding sponge. This ended up looking just about how I wanted, but could still have been a little smoother. Painting is hard. Also I need to build some painting triangles, because it got stuck to the underground twice.
The finish
Last paint related thing was the rough look. With nothing else on hand, I dabbed on acrylic paint. It did not seem to stick in the beginning so I went all in. To an extend that I thought I had ruined the piece when it was all dry. Looked like a cheap ass camo clothing pattern designed by a 3yo (or something even worse).
First I tried to carefully remove only the top coat of acrylic, but this quickly hurt the lower coats until even the primer showed. So I just went to town with all my sanding paper and even a paint scraper. Took way more time than I wanted, but at least it turned out ok. A sanding sponge came in clutch here for reaching all the crevices. Definitely a worthwhile 'tool' to have. This is the part where I would be interested in other approaches to achieve this look - something I have to look into.
The extra bits
For the straps I just ordered some 10mm wide nylon band. Could have payed more attention here: The straps are not simply cut and go, but I had to get out the sewing machine to attach the plastic bits.
Also simply no one seems to own one of these blue IKEA bags anymore, so I had to cut up some old apron for the blue top. Not exactly what I was looking for, but got it close enough.
The resume
Fun project, that of course took longer than expected. My learning with the paint is once again: Take your time! I think I would have needed to spend more time on almost every step to get that 'perfect' finish. But for the first time it felt achievable with my equipment on hand. That's encouraging! Since, on this project, everything was roughed up anyway, it did not feel like a failure. The rest was pretty straight forward and it was a really enjoyable project with minimal space and tool requirements.
