Cradle for my first Grandbaby due in Sept 2011

I am building this cradle for my first grandbaby who is due in September. I first saw the plans for the cradle in a 2007 edition of Wood magazine and thought what a wonderful gift that I could build in the woodshop. I decided to build it out of walnut and finish it with wipe-on poly. Being that both of my son’s are very tall I did make a few changes to the size, 4 inches longer and 2 inches wider. I first created templates out of MDF so I could use my router and template bit to duplicate the parts. This way I am sure to make the parts match and greatly speeds the process after the templates are built. It really makes the through tenens easy to fit. I am sure this will not be the last one I build. What I really like about this design is that it uses through tenens that are pinned and can be knocked down for easy storage and transport since my son lives on the other coast.

When I first put it together I did not like seeing the heads of the carriage bolts so decided to cut a wooden cap using a hole saw without a pilot bit and glued them to the bolts. This was a nice touch.

I finished it with a couple coats of Watco danish oil and 4 coats of Shellac. I then rubbed it out with 0000 steel wool and a coat of paste wax.

Almost done, I just need to do a little fitting of the pins that hold it all together.

See all of my cradle photos at http://pavswoodshop.com/mathew/pages/cradle.html