Crib #2

I have not posted much about the progress of Kate’s crib lately, but here is an update. It seems that there is never enough time, but I am finally wrapping up this project. The wood has all been dimensioned and cut to final sizes for some time now. I finished the legs about three weeks ago and last weekend I decided to begin work on the mortises in the upper and lower end rails.

I left the original plans for the crib some time ago when I deviated from their guided trough and filler block route. I did not see how that could be a very good design for a sturdy and hopefully long lasting crib (not to mention how bad it would have looked). I decided to use only mortise and tenon joints and I believe the added time needed to mill out the mortise and tenon joints is really paying off. It took about four hours on Saturday morning to mill all of the mortise joints on both sets of the upper and lower end rails (2-3 of those hours were spent building my jigs). I then used a 3/8" and 1/2" chisel to square off the corners. All of these mortises are 3/4" deep and 3/8" x 1-3/8" wide. I used a spiral mortising router bit, which worked really well.

I finished squaring off the mortises for the other end rails when I got home today. I still need to tweak a few of the joints, but these are very sturdy at this point and nothing is glued yet! So the pieces you see in these pictures are all constructed with mortise and tenon joints!

I am going to try to finish the side rails this week and begin sanding all of these pieces next week. I also need to round over the edges of the end caps, but that should not take much time. I will then seal everything using a General Finishes wipe-on gel Urethane that is non-toxic once dry. Finally I will assembly and glue everything up and then install the hardware! Should be done in the next 2 weeks!