Baby's First Furniture #2: The lumber yard

Part 2-

Finally made the trip to the mill today. My favorite mill is in Greenfield MA which is about 2.5 hrs away from our house in Warwick, RI. We were in the area for thanksgiving and have been planning on picking up material for this project for some time.

After making some rough drawings, I figured that 85 board feet should be more than enough lumber to complete this project. I planned on all 4/4 except for about 5 BF of 8/4 for the legs..

This mill usually has a great supply of the essentials (all of the domestics plus the common exotics) plus a rotating stock of some unusual stuff. (Here’s the link for you guys in the area www.forestproductsassociates.com. easily the best hardwood distributer I’ve been to) I mentioned in my last entry that they had some Eucalyptus, but my wife and I really wanted this furniture to be a dark brown color, so the eucalyptus just wouldn’t work. It’s just too light. Genuine Mahogany, and walnut are closer to what we’re looking for, but we opted for Sapele Mahogany. Great ribbon stripe and nice color, beautiful. The only drawback is they only had 6/4 stock.

After a lot of himming and hawing (is that how you spell that?), I decided that I could re-saw 6/4 to the appropriate dimensions (this stuff is rough but is VERY straight and flat at 1-5/8 or more for all of the boards. I decided that it’s worth the effort. I’ll probably have to pick up a good resaw blade as my bandsaw is mostly used to cut curves on 4/4 stock, but I’ll cross that bridge as I get to it.

My design is based on a pottery barn crib my wife saw a while ago. I’ve been thinking about the construction, but drawing a blank on how to keep the joinery hidden on some of the intersections. Have any of you guys seen good crib plans? I’ve been thinking about buying a set, but my pride has a hard time buying plans. The back to the sides is a no-brainer (bed bolts from the back) and the front bottom is straight forward too cause the mattress will hide any mechanical joinery, but the top front is throwing me for a loop. (Remember I want to be able to break this thin down). Here’s a link to the pottery barn crib that we’ve based our design on. —> http://www.potterybarnkids.com/room/rom/romnur/romnurlux/index.cfm. The only difference is the back will be straight across and not curved, it will have raised panels and not spindles, and will not have a drop down front.

Any idea how to make this joint and not have obvious joinery?

Well that’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
Bob

-- Bob B - Warwick, Rhode Island