My intent here was well intentioned but completely misplaced. The goal was to produce simple objects that would be wonderful to own and use, that are well made and delightful that don’t cost the earth. Although I did arrive at a few pieces that work in terms of outcome the amount of work involved to make one of these is not justified with the goal of affordability in mind. Due to the technical nature of this particular design with no clean process for manufacture these don’t pass spec.
There’s a lot to consider; the bases of the trays will move with changes in humidity, there needs to be space for the grooves that hold the bases and allowance for the base to move in the grooves. Yet the sides need to be light and elegant. These groove exits shouldn’t be visible. Then there’s joinery methods. Miters hide a through groove but on their own aren’t strong enough. Then there’s ease of assembly and batch producibility to be mindful of. Here you can see this mitered joint is reinforced with splines that provide the required strength. This all takes time.
I’ve given these some more thought and I think I’m a little closer to workable solutions. The key to achieve affordability is arrive at a design that can be produced in batches. The right jigs, assembly methods and right tooling would be essential.
Smaller items are favorable for the low cash outlay for the end customer but they are tricky, fiddly, more work than most expect and for a lot of us not really worth the effort. However with some careful thought, iteration and setup and if they are well executed they provide a wonderful way to share something pleasing. More on this a little later.