How Light is the Camping Kitchen Box?

The most unique feature of the Camping Kitchen Box, compared to other chuck boxes, is its weight, which is only 12 lbs. How much lighter is the Camping Kitchen Box compared to other boxes? Below I compare the CKB to a home built chuck box, and then some popular commercial  chuck boxes.

 The Home Made Chuck Box

REI recently had a blog post  with plans on how to make a chuck box out of ½ inch plywood. There are hundreds of chuck plans out on the internet, but these particular plans are good for making a direct comparison to the CKB, because the final dimensions (28” X 21” X 16½” )  are  a  good match up with the Camping Kitchen Boxes Dimension (25" X 22½" X 17") and they both are designed not to have their own legs. The weight of half inch plywood depending on woods species, glue and other factors, so it  can weigh anywhere from 40 to 50 lbs for a standard 4’ X 8’ (32 square foot) sheet.  If you take the cut list for the REI box and add up all the dimensions it uses 26.5 square feet of plywood. Using the low end of 40 lbs per square foot that makes the weight of the box at 33 lbs before screwing and gluing it together and adding hardware. By the time all is said and done, this chuck box can easily weight almost 3 times the weight of the CKB!

Commercial Chuck Boxes

Below is a comparison on some other commercial  chuck boxes and the CKB. These are weights without legs. I have also added the outside dimensions and a rough calculation of interior space based on those dimensions, and for fun divided the weight by the interior space so you can directly compare each box. A higher volume / weight number is better.