Inspired by the bow rack that JayLost posted. This one is for my father-in-law’s birthday this Friday. He loves archery, and he loves his heritage (Scottish), so I combined the two into this.

Most of it is cherry. The crest in the upper center is Aspen. I tried hand carving (fail) and moved to Dremel carving (messy) and ended up using a router to clean things up. The motto is burned in.

I added a shelf underneath for arrowheads, accessories, etc. Was going to build a drawer, but it’s a bit shallow for that. I did use this project to explore dovetail joints. The shelf is dovetailed, and the vertical uprights are stopped dovetails. It worked OK. It’s one of those skills I am going to continue to practice on. For me, experience is the best teacher.

Finished with an old can of Minwax Early American stain, topped with Polycrylic water-based clear semi-gloss.

I probably would not use the Polycrylic again. But, it’s what I had on hand and it did a good enough job. Like the rest of you, I tend to see the flaws in what I did, but I am confident he will love it.

i would love to get feedback, as I am still a beginner, but I love the craft and want to get better.

Plans and hardware came from Rockler. Wood is Maple with cherry accents. I can;t find the plan on the Rockler site anymore, but if you do a Bing for Heirloom Crib Plan, it should show up in one or more of the search results.

Believe it or not, this was my first real woodworking project. I didn’t start with boxes or something easy like dovetail or box joints.

I jumped right in and made a crib… lol That’s totally me.

Made this for a gift exchange at work. Featured in the December/January 2006/2007 issue of Wood Magazine. Cherry/Aspen with a cler finish