McGrath; I think you're probably right about tea chests. When I helped a friend to pack for a house removal recently the company supplied flatpack cardboard 'tea chests'. OK, I know they're environmentally friendly, but the old tea chests were very sturdy, and as Bill suggested, they were the sort of thing that most families would have knocking around in the attic, ready for conversion to instruments. I suppose the steel band instruments, which I think were often improvised from oil drums, were a similar example; not to mention the row of milk bottles filled with water I remember Mum amusing us with on occasions!