Ammo Box

[Jak Kelly]

Here is one of my most recent, completed projects. I built it out of necessity, for 2 people, me being one, my father the other. Anyway for all you enthusiastic gun owners out there you may enjoy this. My build is nothing complex, no fancy joints, no exotic woods either, heck honestly not much wood at all since I used MDF for the majority of the build. The box is big, I wanted to maximize the overall size of the box based off of one sheet of 3/4" MDF, so my dimensions that I came up with was 36" X 24" X 24". As usual my build went way over budget, that damned hardware ate my lunch!!!!!!!!! You can see that in the bottom of the box there are some 2" x 8"s supporting or tying the sidewalls + bottom + and end walls together. I placed 2 strips of 1" X 6" poplar on the bottom to mount my casters to and assist with firmly fastening the trim in place.
Part of the reason I did not use any real joinery was that I was looking at some old ammo boxes, military grade, and they appear to be straight cut, crate style framing, so i wanted it to appear to have that "industrial" look. I did manage to put a small 45* bevel on each corner because I know what it feels like to find those sharp corners in the dark. I wound up finding the signs on-line and got a decent deal on those. All in all, its ugly, built to hold a lot of weight, glued, screwed, and painted with 3 coats of latex paint.
Basically just wanted a box that could be secured, has a decent look to it, was functional and could be a place a could centralize all of my ammo, small gun parts, knives.................. just a way of cleaning out the gun cabinet so I could have more room for the guns and also not have to unload or worry about the ammo when I wasn't around.

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[Yonak Hawkins]

Looks good, Jak. It appears you successfully sealed the edges of the MDF. How did you do that ? Did you say the wood trim is stained poplar ?

[Jak Kelly]

Looks good, Jak. It appears you successfully sealed the edges of the MDF. How did you do that ? Did you say the wood trim is stained poplar ?

I just painted the MDF with a good primer based paint. From what I have been told, by my step-brother, that if it is painted with a good paint with 100 percent coverage, MDF will last a long time, even outside in the elements. The trim is just a rough cedar. I used the poplar 1" X 6" on bottom to mount my casters to and provide additional nailing support for the trim. The trim was dropped below the box bottom to help hide the ugly casters, probably about an inch or so off the ground, it is really hard to see the casters, which is what i wanted.
It may be worth mentioning the I did paint the entire box, 3 or 4 times, before I put any trim or hardware on it. The trim just has a few coats of stain on it.

[Bruce Volden]

Looks good! One question tho', how heavy will it be once filled?

I had to ask that because a friend of mine wanted be to make an oak case for his Thompson machine gun. It had to have room for 3 drum magazines, as well as storage for extra ammo. I made it, he liked it, he could barely lift it to haul around for his less than 2 minutes of "fun shooting". Funny

Bruce

[Jak Kelly]

Looks good! One question tho', how heavy will it be once filled?

I had to ask that because a friend of mine wanted be to make an oak case for his Thompson machine gun. It had to have room for 3 drum magazines, as well as storage for extra ammo. I made it, he liked it, he could barely lift it to haul around for his less than 2 minutes of "fun shooting". Funny

Bruce

That's a funny question. I say this because my brothers' first response when he looked at it was "Now they know what to steal first"!
Empty I think the darn thing is close to 100#'s, right now it is possibly 1/4 capacity with ammo, and too heavy for 2 big guys to pull a "grab and run" with it.
I did not build it with the intent to be hauled around. It was built on casters so it could be moved out of the way when necessary, like cleaning house, maybe want to move it to another room.......... more of a convenience issue, not with the intent to be easily transported to the gun range. That's what they make bags for.
I would guesstimate that once it is filled or close to capacity it should weigh several hundred pounds. I did use some wide wheel, heavy type casters, i think they were rated at 175# per caster. Looks like 1K rounds of .223 is roughly 30#'s, if that gives you any idea of what ammo can weigh.
The top carry-outs will hold a lot of odds and ends gun parts. If you noticed I included a file folder on the underneath side of the lid, used some double-sided sticky tape and small screws with fender washers to make sure it stays there. Now all your manuals and any ballistic information can be easily accessed in one place.

[ray hampton]

1k of 223 rounds weigh how much ? this will equal about 33 rounds per pound

[Jak Kelly]

According to a google search, I got roughly 30# per 1K, that was from multiple answers.

[ray hampton]

According to a google search, I got roughly 30# per 1K, that was from multiple answers.

that means that 1 porter can carry 2 k in ammo

[brad jansen]

Nice job and well finished. Put a trailer hitch on that baby.