Cradle - final product

Over the last few months, we have been writing about the progress of our cradle. Our aim was to get it completely done by April 1. While it was mostly done by then, it still had to be varnished. Jim applied the last coat of polyurethane to it two days before Annie was born! :) Here are photos of the final product (with Annie in it):


It is in our bedroom right now, as all the books and experts say that it's best to have the baby sleep in the room with you for the first few months. You'll see that she fits perfectly in it.

Jim is now learning how to do dovetail joints, and he's practicing by remaking our kitchen drawers. It's a good project, because anything he builds, even with serious mistakes in them, will be better than the drawers we have now. He did a great job remaking our kitchen utensil drawer.

High aspirations, little accomplished

I expected to do a lot today. Baby class in the morning, followed by purchasing a crib, followed by getting our dresser out of storage and organizing all the shower gifts.

In reality, we managed to attend the baby class, which was on breastfeeding. And that's all we accomplished.

It wasn't for lack of trying. After the class, which was in Needham, we had a really delicious lunch at Panera Bread. I am not normally a big fan of Panera Bread, mostly because they seem to put these funky-tasting peppers in all of their vegetarian dishes. But lately, absolutely any food tastes phenomenally delicious to me, and plus, there were none of those peppers in the sandwich and salad I got.

Afterwards, we went to the following stores to try to find a crib: Jordan's, Ikea, Bassett, BJ's, and Babies R Us. Jordan's is a local furniture store that markets itself by emphasizing that it has "underprices." (I think that catches people's attention because it sounds like "underwear"!). They had 4 cribs, all basically the same except for the color. They were all convertible models (we don't need a convertible crib) and they were all almost $700. That wasn't happening. Next, we went to Ikea, and found a great crib. Except that the only colors it came in were Pepto-Bismol pink and Cookie-Monster blue. The other cribs looked pretty flimsy, like portable cribs. Next.

So then we went to Bassett, which is a brand new store. Before, if you wanted Bassett furniture, you had to find it at a more general furniture store. So, when Jim's mom bought us a coffee table a few years ago, she ordered it in Buffalo at the Bassett store, but we picked it up at a general furniture store in Quincy. Anyway, the Bassett store we went into today didn't carry cribs. I've heard that Babies R Us carries Bassett cribs now.

Next, it was BJ's. They also didn't carry cribs, or any furniture except one dresser with very bent drawers. You can buy cribs on-line from BJ's, but not at their store. And by the way, going into BJ's was quite an experience. I hadn't been in one of those wholesale-type stores since college and forgot how Walmart-esq they were. Jim was fascinated with their large blocks of cheese. We bought one of those in college and I think we had it for the whole semester. Just had to scrape off the mold before eating towards the end of the semester. :)

Finally, we caved and went to Babies R Us. I really don't like Babies R Us. We have had quite a fiasco with the crib that we registered for, which I think I've already blogged about. Anyway, we decided to look at other cribs, but really couldn't find anything that we liked in our price range. Plus, the saleswoman said that her computer seemed to indicate that our first-choice crib might be in stock soon. She said it looked like a shipment might be outside the warehouse, waiting to be categorized and stocked. I don't know how she would know this from her computer. Maybe she was making it up. (I wouldn't put it past BRU customer service). But at this point, we were both exhausted and discouraged and decided to get ice cream and go home. Which is what we did. We'll try again next weekend, I guess. They're supposed to call us if the crib is stocked.

We didn't end up getting our dresser out of storage because it is pouring rain/snow and miserable here today. We're going to try to do that tomorrow.

Jim is almost finished with the cradle - he just has to put 2 more coats of polyurethane on the bottom (the part that the mattress will sit on). It looks amazing. I'm really glad we have a cradle lined up because we may not have a crib when the baby comes on the scene.

Still on the agenda for the weekend: grocery shopping, laundry, getting the dresser out, organizing everything.

Cradle base and rockers

It's now time to finish the cradle's base and rockers. Today, Jim attached the rockers to the base and the base to the top. Then he sanded it:


Then we signed it:


And now he's applying polyurethane to the bottom. Originally, he was going to finish the base and rockers separately from the rest of the cradle, but now he thinks that finishing them while attached will seal them better to the top of the cradle.

The cradle should be completely done in a few days!! It's really exciting.

Poly

Jim put the second coat of polyurethane on the cradle this morning. Looks great!

We are heading out to Marlboro this morning to have brunch with some friends. It's pouring rain - a little early for April showers, but it's better than snow.

Cribs, cradles, and baby

Jim's back from San Diego, the weather's great, and it's only Saturday. What more could we want? Today Jim put the first coat of finish on the cradle. We are doing a clear, polyurethane finish. There are probably lots of nicer finishes we could've done, most involving oil, but we are running out of time and we've had pretty good luck with poly in the past. Jim finished our front door with it about 6 or 7 years ago, and it came out great. As with the door, the cherry wood is a beautiful color, and as time passes, it will darken. Plus, each coat only takes a few hours to dry. He'll probably put 3 coats on. He's working on the top of the cradle now (head board, foot board, side boards, roof). Later, he'll do the bottom and the rockers, and then he'll attach the rockers to the bottom and bottom to the top, and it'll be done.

We also looked at cribs today. We wanted to do a little comparison shopping with Babies-R-Us and went to a place called Baby Furniture Warehouse in Braintree, which was supposed to have great prices and great quality. It was recommended by the Baby Bargains book that has sort of become my bible and security blanket for purchasing all things baby. Well, I think this place carried some higher end and designer furniture, but with fancy brand name comes higher price, and we simply don't need a top-of-the-line, designer crib for the relatively short amount of time we'll use it. We did find one brand, Romira, that seemed particularly well-made, but $800-$900 for a crib? I think not. Even if it does have dove tails. To be honest, the cribs all start looking the same after about 5 minutes of shopping. So we're sticking with our original plan and getting the crib from B-R-U. Unfortunately, it's temporarily unavailable on-line, so we'll have to make a trip over there to order it. Maybe we'll do that tomorrow when it's supposed to pour rain.

I'm getting awfully tired of lugging around all this extra weight. It really seemed to hit home this afternoon. I took a nap on our couch out on the front porch. When I woke up, the sun was in my eyes so I tried to sit up quickly and I couldn't. Jim ended up helping me sit up. Then I started walking around and I just felt like my body had been filled with cement. I can't garden - Jim worked the compost into the garden this afternoon, to get the soil ready for planting in a couple of weeks. It's hard to put on my socks and shoes. All I feel like doing is sitting around. I feel like a slug.

Tonight we have friends coming over for dinner and we're going to cook out on the grill. I love that. It's a sure sign that summer is really going to come.

Cradle Assembly continued

The cradle is basically assembled now. Jim attached the roof this morning, and that was the last gluing we'll have to do. You can see that roof's still clamped, as the glue dries:

Here's the whole thing. You can see that Jim sanded down the box joints on the footboard and they look nice and smooth now:

The bottom and the rockers will be attached quickly with screws. We probably will wait on attaching them until after we put the polyurethane on.

You might ask what the next wood project will be after this. Jim is thinking of redoing some of our kitchen drawers, since it'll allow him to practice different types of joints. He'll try to do some dovetail joints too. He already did our utensil drawer and it is so much nicer than what we had before, which was about one step above particle board and was falling apart. Now it's really sturdy.

Progress Photos

Here it is, the headboard is all done, and the cross brace (which holds the hood) is now being glued. The hammer is to hold the cross brace down while the glue sets. Sorry the pictures are not so great...
We have also started to cut and join the roof. That should be done tomorrow. As we speak the foot board is setting.

Still to do:
1) Finish the roof
2) sand the box joints on the foot board smooth.
3) Assemble the bottom, and route bevel around the edge of the bottom
4) Attach the bottom to the "box".
5) finish the wood with some form of sealant, which at this point, is going to be Polyurethane.

Cradle assembly

We are finally assembling the cradle! Last night we glued the headboard on to the sideboards, and this morning we glued the footboard on. The box joints look fabulous! In fact, the whole thing looks great. This afternoon, we have to go to the woodworking store to get some thin pieces of cherry for the roof, as well as the wood stain. Norm recommends a "Dutch oil," because it ages well on the cherry wood. So we need to find that at the store. He says it's easy to apply. But I would imagine that just about anything in woodworking land is easy for Norm.

It is really exciting that it's all coming together. You just can't buy something like this at Babies-R-Us. Of course, I looked on e-Bay and there are some antique cradles there. But this one will be made by us. Maybe someday it'll appear on the 22nd century version of Antiques Roadshow. :) Ha.

For now, we're off to do some grocery shopping. I'm going to make m'judra for a shiva that we're going to tonight (our friend's father died last weekend).

By the way, did I mention that it's the 2nd day of spring??

Cradle Part III

Just a quick update, much has happened since the last posting:

The bottom is complete, both the cradle bottom, and the rockers are done. After some smoothing the rockers slide right in and are set to be attached with a simple screw. (There will end up being 4 screws in the whole thing.

All the box joints are done. This turned out to be fairly easy, just a few hours of work per side. I was thinking it would be a few days of work per side. After most of the wood was cut out with a router, I squared them off by hand. It helps when you have razor sharp chisels. I also used a square block to make sure my cuts were perfect, a tip I learned on (http://woodtreks.com/how-to-hand-cut-precision-dovetails-the-tails-part-2-of-2/77/). In short everything came out great.

Unfortunately, as I cut the last joints this morning we had a horrible accident. Part of the side split off. Luckily it was a clean cut and a bit of glue will make it stronger than ever. On the left is a picture of the side (now glued together). On the right is a picture of the crack. If you pay attention you can see the crack under the point of the screw driver. The good news is glue on a joint hat runs with the grain is actually stronger than the wood itself. That means if I beat this side with a hammer it will break somewhere else before that joint breaks again. You will notice I use a template to keep the box joints in line for the glue up. I had to be very careful to not glue the template to the side.

Also, here is a picture of the headboard, footboard and sideboard connected together. To the right is a close up of the box joints. Its not tightly fitted, so you may see some gaps. After the final glue they should all be gone (I Hope).

Tonight Jeannie and I are off to restaurant night in Beacon Hill with some friends. This afternoon we are going to enjoy the weather. Jeannie is baking raisin bread, and I am making sour dough.

Progress

The last few days have seen much progress in the woodshop. My dilemma creating box joints has mostly been solved. While we won't know for some time if its truly solved, I have a plan and things are progressing well. To make 18 inches of box joints, I cut a template using the jig. Remember, the jig only supported 12 inch wide wood. I then took the template and and a pattern router bit to cut the fingers. After one set of cuts, I shifted the template.

This worked, the backs of the fingers are somewhat rounded, and I will need to square each one by hand. This will be painful. However, I have ordered things to keep my chisels razor sharp and with some luck they will arrive this week.

This weekend saw two new developments too. While waiting for the sharpening tools I cut the bottom to its final size. Unfortunately, I cut it an inch short. A very amateur error, but I am an armadillo. When you use a tape measure, and want precise measurements, you always start from 1, since the end of a tape measure wiggles a little bit. I did this, but didn't add an inch into the final measurement. Oops! We plan to cut the sides one inch shorter later this week.

With much love I managed to cut the rockers for the bottom. The first rocker was cut with a router and a belt sander. After about two hours of work it was where I wanted, I used the pattern bit in the router to duplicate it on a second piece of wood. It came out well, but the router bit jammed up and burned the wood. Some planing and sanding fixed the black marks.

To attach the rockers to the bottom, we needed a sliding dovetail joint. I had never done one before, but after some practice it turned out to be somewhat easy. Hear is Jeannie putting one of the grooves in the bottom. Here is a picture of a sliding dove tail, ours came out picture perfect. By using the sliding dovetail, the rockers and the bottom will be able to expand and contract due to humidity and will not crack the bottom of the cradle. Because the rockers and the bottom expand and contract in different ways, the joints can't be glued. As the rocker expands it will just slide in the track.

Next up, waiting for the sharpening stones. They are in transit from Cambridge Ohio to Cambridge Mass as we speak. Then I can get to work squaring the box joints.... The clock ticks on.

BTW, for those of you who think you saw a typo: Think again. Here I am working with Jim. He does most of the work, I am just comic relief.

The Cradle ...

As many of you know, I have recently taken up woodworking. While on hiatus from my economic degree (while we await the arrival of the newest member of our family) I decided to take up woodworking. I figured there is never a time when we shouldn't be learning something new. So, I took a class, and made a box. The class was great, I learned a lot. Needless to say I was somewhat motivated to make a clock. The clock bit is another story: I canned the clock idea and set my talents (or lack there of) on the production of a cradle for the soon to be little one.

Rather than do a contemporary mini-crib, I set my eyes on a Norm Abrams special from the PBS TV Show "New Yankee Workshop." I got the plans for the cradle from the library, and started building up my workshop. We picked cherry wood, which is beautiful and gets better with age, and started acquiring tools. As I explain to my wife, all men like tools: This is not a stereotype, since its 100% true. And so, the journey began.

While many of you who talk to me on a regular basis know, the last few months have been quite an oddesy. While I have not been side tracked by the sirens of other projects, I have faced quite a steep learning curve. Its so steep, with so many challenges I have decided to blog about it. The end goal can be seen above. Thank you to to Patick Fitzgerald (http://www.barelyfitz.com/homepages/patrick.fitzgerald/woodworking/cradle/) who did a much better job than I will ever do. Get a good look at it, you may not see something so beautiful for a while.

Making the sides, top, and back was a bit of work. Though that part is done. Multiple boards needed to be jointed together, a process which I figured out with a lot of help from my better half.

Boards were purchased [left] (for much more than about 10 cradled at Babies are us of course). A table saw was aquired, a router was upgraded, router bits were mail ordered and returned, jigs were sent for, and clamps were aquired. In the end boards were biscuted (don't ask) and joined. Some of the joints were wrong, the boards were rejoined. In the end, we were left with some very beautiful big rectangles of rich cherry. Sucess; it took us about three weeks.

Within a weekend the bottom, sides and headboard were finished (almost) [See to the left]. Then the fun started. To connect the sideboards and the footboard requires Box Joints, also called Finger Joints. They look strikeing, but I had never made any in my class. Luckily we have web access. I got a special finger joint jig, some special router bits, and a whole lot of cheap wood from Home Depot. I practiced, and practiced and finally got pretty good at it. We cut the joints for the footboard. They came out well. You can see them in the picture o the left. By the way, figuring out how to round out the footboard was fun: The solution involves a peice of quilting thread, a pencil and a ruler.

The hard part is the headboard. Its to big to fit in my box joint jig. To get a bigger Jig is a many hundreds of dollar problem, and a place I dare not go. So, I did some surfing on the web and came up with an alternative plan. I could make a jig for my table saw to cut the joint for the headboard. The picture is below on the left. If you search for table saw jig for box joints you will see how it works.
I then did what any reasionable person did. I practiced. Before I cut into the headboard which cost a small fortune in wood, I needed to prefect (or become a least somewhat compitent) making these joints. Mostly I failed. I cannot reliably produce the joints on the table saw.
Sometimes it works for me, but not always. This is a recipy for failure. Thats where I am now, I am going to teach myself yet another method of making these joints: Doing it by hand. Thats really hard. I have had to invest in yet more tools: sharpening stones for my chissel set. That said, I have alot of confidence things will come out OK.

However, if they don't, I have started this blog so at least you can partake in my Odissy on the road to a well made cradel. The plan is to have it done by April 1st. All we need is a FOX TV crew here, it will be like in so many reality shows: A tight deadline, lots of problems... Will he make it? Keep following, you will be the first to know.

Cradle

JK2 is working on making a cradle for the baby. He's pretty excited about it (and so am I). We have an old blanket box/hope chest that my great-grandfather Charlie Rech made (presumably for my grandmother). It's just a very simple oak box, but I've always thought it was cool to have furniture in our house that was actually made by a family member.

JK2 found these really cool plans for an antique-style cradle from Norm Abrams, local Boston carpentry hero (from This Old House and Yankee Workshop). Click here to see what it will look like. Apparently Norm got the idea for the cradle after seeing an antique one in Old Sturbridge Village (sort of the Massachusetts equivalent of Williamsburg).

Since JK2 decided not to take graduate classes this semester, due to the fact that the baby is due when he would be in finals, he wanted to do something else with his time. He's always been interesting in woodworking, so he took a beginning woodworking class this month at the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain, where he learned how to use the various tools. He initially planned on making a grandfather clock, but he thought the cradle project would be a little more manageable for a first-time construction. Last week, he bought a table saw from Sears (he has been talking about buying one for years).

Today we picked out the wood. Like the cradle in the link above, JK2 decided to use cherry wood. Norm says that cherry ages well, and I really like the warm, reddish look of cherry wood. We drove up to Boulter Plywood in Somerville, a place that sells just about any kind of wood you can imagine, and we got our wood. They cut it for you right there, so it was even easier to fit in our car than we expected. Now it has to sit in our house for a couple of days to get acclimated.

I hope he'll be able to get it done in time! He has 3 months, so that seems like it should be enough time. If it all works out, JK2 wants to make other things, like the clock, or a block set for the baby.