All of these things were foremost on my mind even before I started painting the 32" x 40" oil portrait to ship 1500 miles away from my studio.
I made the following video using Google Sketch-up (it was the first thing I ever did in Sketch-up, so pardon the glaring errors...) and posted it on my blog Everyday Paintings along with a number of supporting photographs and comments, describing how and why I built my crate the way I did. You can read all the details at the specific blog enrty Crate Expectations. (Yeah, I made that up, too).