After cleaning up I applied 2 coats of Tried & True Danish oil, followed up with 3 coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal.

At last we could finally see assembled crib in its various forms.

Next I installed various threaded inserts that will be used to bolt and screw the crib together.

Using some maple and ash scrap I had lying around I threw together a mattress support and glued and screwed cleats to the lower rails. The crib was more or less structurally complete, it just needed to be assembled!

Once the joints were completely cured I used a plane to clean up tenon portions of the bridal joints.

Once drilling was complete, it was time for all the glue-ups. These were slightly tricky. I decided to wrap the ends of the spindles and panels with blue tap to simplify the cleanup, especially since these pieces were already sanded to 220. I first glued in the lower rails to the vertical posts. This was possible because the top rail can be pushed straight down since I was using a bridal joint instead of a standard mortise and tenon at the top corners. Once that was dry, with the help of a number of pipe clamps and a few taps with a rubber mallet I was able to get the panels all glued up without too much trouble.

Gluing up the toddler front:

Gluing up one of the crib sides:

Gluing up the front of the crib:

Gluing up the back of the crib:

At this point I did a few dry assemblies and started thinking about my clamping and glue up strategy. I decided trying to glue up entire sides at once was a recipe for disaster. To simplify things I did a few sub-assemblies by glueing up the lower rails and maple splines.

I glued the three portions back together to produce a stepped panel. It would be impossible to get clamps in there to pull these three together when doing the final glue up. By gluing them up ahead of time the final glue up would be considerably easier. On most of these the glue line is almost impossible to make to make out. If I were to do it again I would consider using a thin kerf saw blade or better yet consider making the rips on the band saw. That would result in less material loss and thus better grain matching in the final product.

At this point I did a crude dry assembly, just making sure each tenon fit. Where necessary I went back and cleaned up the shoulders of a tenon when it wouldn’t slide into place easily.

With all the tenons made and the panels glued back it up it was time for a lot of sanding.

I felt terrible milling down 4/4 stock down to 1/2”. In the future, provided I get a band saw capable of resawing, I think I might use 8/4 stock and resaw down to three 1/2” boards. Oh well, there’s always something to try in the future provided one has the right tools for the job. At least I now have beautiful maple shavings around various pine saplings in the woods outside our house. Since I removed so much material and the completed pieces were thin I decided to strap them together until they had a chance to acclimate.

I’m currently borrowing my neighbors bench-top bandsaw which has a slightly dull blade and doesn’t always cut perfectly straight so I’m a bit of a wimp and cut more like 1/8” to 3/16” to my template line. I then attach the template with double sided carpet tape and carefully sand to within 1/16” with a oscillating spindle sander. I find this step quite relaxing and stress free. I must admit using some form of dust collection during this step is a must!
In order to sneak up on the line at the internal junction of each step I find it helpful to switch from the lagest to one of the smaller drums. My Dad helped out a lot switching the drums while I was getting the next piece setup with a template.

I then moved on to template routing using using a hand-held router and a template bit. There are a lot of profiles on this project and I definitely got a better hang of it as I went along. I made half-templates so I will have a perfectly symmetrical profile since the same template is used at both ends. This also allows me to place the template on the ideal side so I’m never routing across the grain. As a result I didn’t have any problems with the bit grabbing the wood like I have in the past. Here you can see all the mortises I mentioned in the last blog posting…

And here you can see all the routed profiles. I still need to rout the long middle rails and the toddler top rail, but other than that template routing is complete. Phew!

While I could in theory cut my tenons at the ends of the rails with the same attachment, I find it much easier to creep up on a good fit by slowly raising the blade and making horizontal passes.

Since this produces a slightly rough result, after 99% of the material has been removed I remove the remaining irregularities by sliding the board across the blade, much like you would when cove cutting.

This past weekend by parents came up and my Dad and I spent the better part of two days working on the crib. On Saturday we worked exclusively on mortising. There sure are a lot of mortises in this project! Before he came I built an auxiliary fence for my mortiser. I was not happy with the results I was getting the past when I simply help the stock in place. I used some old inline skate wheels to hold the stock in place. These allow me to slide the stock left and right when it is not clamped in place. I find these doing a much better job holding the stock down when raising the mortising chisel compared to the attachment that came with the mortiser. For now I use a simple F-style clamp to hold the stock against the fence.

After making a series of square holes, we would come back for a second pass to connect them all up. I saw this technique recently and it really makes a difference. By plunging into solid wood in the first place the chisel is equally supported and does not want to move left or right. During the second pass there is no wood on both the left and right of the chisel, so while unsupported the chisel isn’t biased and does not move. Between the auxiliary fence, sharpening my chisels with a cone sharpener, clamping the stock in place and this new technique for making the initial set of holes, I’m finding I’m getting much better results.

Mortising took a long time in part because a number of the mortises were stepped since we were making them before cutting out the stepped pattern. That, and the fact that the various parts are of various thicknesses required a number of depth stop adjustments, but in the end we got it all done in one day.

Once the story sticks are laid out, it’s time to transfer the lines to the actual stock. Since I don’t have to pull a tape and remember where to make all the marks this part is virtually dummy proof.

Then I extend the lines using a small combination square.

I plan on using a template bit and a router to create the stepped pattern in the rails so I spent some time making templates out of hard board.

After a few hours all the layout lines are in place. Next time I will work on making the mortises, roughing out the stepped pattern, and maybe a little template routing.

After first cleaning up one end, I pull a tape and make a mark.

Then, instead of attempting to visually line up that line (wherever it ended up across the width of the board) with the saw kerf, I instead extend that line using a small or large combination square. For narrow stock the small combination square is a real treat. It’s incredibly light weight and feels great in your hands. More importantly, I can now pull a straight line with my tape, instead of trying to hook my tape near one edge of the board or the other. I also don’t have to do that extra mental math figure out which side of the board I should get my mark near. By extending the line the full width I can relax knowing I’ll have a mark wherever I ended up needing it. I got the small combination square just recently (I think I ordered it from Grizzly). The larger square is an old rusty Stanley that I pulled out of my aunts garage. While restoring the #5 (and a #4) hand plane, I also striped the paint, removed the rust with Evaporust, and primed and painted the square. In the past I never used the thing because it was so hard to read the marks and it felt horrible in your hand (all rusty and rough). Now it’s a real pleasure to use.

I really enjoy cross cutting on my table saw using a sled. It really produces a nice crisp edge, and since I effectively have a zero clearance I don’t get any chip-out. If the board is very long (as it was for the seven 56” front/back rails) I have my shop buddy help me support the end hanging over the edge just ever so slightly. The stock stays tight up against the sled’s fence.

Here’s the finished product, I now have 6 square sides on all boards. I haven’t decided what I’ll work on next. Perhaps I’ll start making templates, or maybe start working on the bridal and mortise and tenon joints. There is so much fun stuff to start contemplating now. Sadly, that will probably have to wait until next weekend. Sometimes I wish the weekend was 5 days and the work week 2 days. It sure would allow me to spend more time in the shop. :-)

Update: After originally posting this entry, Steve and Lew made the great suggestion to setup some stickers and put some weight on the stock to avoid unnecessary twisting and warping. This is a great idea, and one I’ve never tried out before! Fortunately I bought some strap clamps at Harbor Freight the other day for this sort of thing. Now I can relax knowing the boards are all being held in place over the next week. :-)

In the last photo you can see something I’m quite fond of – a new peg board Melissa helped me setup a few weeks back. I now have more or less all my measuring and marking tools organized in one place which really rocks. I hated hunting and digging around for things like those in the past.

As you can see it’s a bit of a challenge to joint a 58” x 7 1/2” x 1” board on a small bench-top jointer but it came be done! (although your arms can get a workout). I really do like the granite table and fence on this unit, although I really yearn for a longer in-feed and outfeed table. Some day. For now, due to the limited capacity (4 1/2”) I can only edge joint since usually stock is too wide to be face jointed. As a result I don’t bother to joint at all before I’m done working with the planer. I surface plane, then joint an edge, then finish up the process at the table saw by ripping stock to width. If anyone is upgrading from a 8” or 10” jointer and would like to give me their old one, message me and I’ll get you my mailing address. :-)

Finally, here is the pile of wood after one edge has been jointed and all boards were shot through the table saw and ripped to width. This last step is so straight forward and effortless once you’ve face planed and jointed that it almost is not worth mentioning. I did use a pair of roller stands this time (a new acquisition) which certainly made ripping MUCH easier than it has been in the past as I don’t have an out-feed table or a permanent shop assistant. :-) I also employed a feather board which helped helped keep the stock nice and tight up against the fence and avoiding burning on all but one board entirely.

One thing I find interesting while working on a project is that you seem to start with a huge amount of stock, but as you machining it down it gets smaller and smaller. I started with 1 1/8” stock, planed it down to 1” thick, and now have finished jointing and ripping it to width. The size of the pile is starting to get considerably smaller already. It will be interesting to see it continue to shrink when I get it all cut to length and begin to mill out the joinery and stepped design.

I’ve been inspired by others on here who have been restoring hand planes and decided to give that a try myself. I’ll post a blog about that later, but for now you can see I’m using a Stanley #5 jack plane I’ve almost finished restoring (I just need to do a better job sharpening the blade and chip-breaker). Several of he boards I’m working with have a bit of twist. Cutting them to rough length helps a bit, but they still rocked a bit more then I’d like. In order to try to reduce the rocking I found the more stable side, then identified the high corners. A few passes with the #5 on the opposing high corners helped takel the rocking out of each board.

One area I need to improve on it securing the board while I work on it with a hand plane. Some day I dream of a dead flat torsion box work surface with bench dogs and a pair of killer end and face vices. For now I settle for a cruddy quick release clamp. This really does not work well at all. The board wants to move on you all the time. I switched to using two clamps but even that is not ideal. Bench dogs are really the way to go. Some day. :-)

After that it’s time for a trip to the surface planer. (As much as I’m having a good time working with hand tools, I don’t see myself ever planing down big hunking boards by hand). I tend to really baby my Dewalt 734, taking very light 1/32” passes, and ideally finishing up with a 1/64” pass on either side of the board. This photo is a little deceiving. I had already surfaced the opposite side of the board and had just flipped it over to surface the cup facing up side.

And finally, here is all the surface planed wood loaded up on top of my table saw (maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, but she held it!). I find this part of a project quite exciting. You finally get to really see what the wood looks like (and if it will work well in the areas you imagined or not). Fortunately, as far as I can tell, I think things will work out quite well the way I have it all planned.

In order to break the boards down to length I’ve tried a variety of methods in the past, including the compound miter saw (not so great for me since I don’t have a sliding saw and thus I easily reach or exceed the cutting capacity and don’t much enjoy doing dangerous things like tipping up the board to complete the cut). I’ve also tried using a circular saw with the board raised up on 2×4 scraps and the blade partially raised. That’s a lot of work and if the rough cut board has any twist you can easy get the blade to bind and get some pretty violent and downright scary kick back. Only recently have I tried using what I once considered the most crude of wood working tools – the jig saw. The jig saw actually works really well. Sure you get a small amount tear out and a fairly rough cut but who cares, if you have an extra 2” factored in then it’s simply not a problem. Kick-back is a non-issue. You can clamp one end of the board to a work surface, then place a couple of rolling stands just below the end that will drop down towards the end of the cut. The icing on the cake is that even if you don’t have a fancy Festool jig saw (I don’t, I use a very cheap Ryobi that isn’t great but gets the job done) you probably have a dust port that does a decent job to keep dust to a minimum. After rough cutting all the cherry for this project I only had a minuscule pile of dust on the floor and only right below my cut. Not all over my bench and not all over me. :-)

Since breaking down the wood worked out so well using this method, I couldn’t help but post a picture of myself with the large pile of rough cut stock I had produced. A few of the smaller parts came out of wider stock I ripped on the table saw after first jointing one edge using a small bench top jointer. I figure it’s best to first rip these down before surface planing since the boards they came from were fairly cupped so by ripping before planning I cut the amount of cupping in half.

Melissa and I decided we wanted a 3-in-1 variety so that we can keep using it over many years.

The toddler bed is more or less the crib with a slightly different “foot-board” side.

Finally a double bed can be constructed by removing the shorter sides and replacing them with long rails with cleats to support the slats or box spring.

After talking with my local supplier of hard woods I determined I won’t be able to get the maple I need until the end of June. That’s fine, I have until the end of September to complete this project (longer if you consider the cradle will be used first), so for now I’ll begin to work the cherry for the posts and rails. I should be able to pattern rout and create all the mortises, then simply fit the maple panels to the mortises when I finally get that material come the end of June.