Finished Cradle

As promised, here are some photos of the finished cradle.   On the order of things I would do differently, if I had it all to do over again, I would extend the center of the basket to accommodate the hanger.  I am not happy with the mechanism that I made up.  It adds an element of fussiness to the design that wasn't necessary.  I'm finishing it with Tung Oil.  The cherry will darken over time, but in the meantime, it is au naturel in color.  It now awaits my grandson. 

 

Cradle Progress

I have made some additional progress on the cradle.  I have assembled the stand.  The feet are a lamination of two pieces of Cherry.  The vertical piece is attached to the feet with a through mortise.  I cut the the mortise for the vertical piece prior to gluing it up, which simplified matters enormously.   The stretcher is actually a lamination as well.  I did not have a piece of sufficient width to run the required length, so I glued up two narrow pieces with a strip of walnut between.  When I cut the decorative channel in the stretcher, I centered it on the walnut.  If I had it to do over again, I might not cut the channel, but once cut, always cut.

The stretcher is also a through mortise.  That I cut on the drill press with a 3/8th inch forstner bit, and cleaned it up with a chisel.  You can see in the photo that it needs to be sanded flush, and cleaned up as well  The two narrow pieces that I glued up for the stretcher were not the same width, so the walnut strip was not centered in the piece, but when I cut the tenon, I centered the walnut strip in the mortise.  The walnut dowel pins are not necessary.  The through mortise would have given more than enough strength for that joint, and so the pins are purely decorative.

The hanging assembly for the basket will fit in the half circle on the vertical piece (the head stock).  You can see it in the photo below.  The "hangers" will be cut from walnut scrap, and will be pinned in place with dowels, that will complement the dowel pins on the feet.  I need to finish shaping the hangers, but they are a variant of "Molly's Cradle," the plans for which can be found with a quick web search.  Personally, I like my idea better, but others may have a different opinion.

I hope to finish it today, and will post details on the "hangers" when I have them all together and cleaned up.

Progress on Cradle

I made a bit more progress on the cradle.  I finished the slats on the other side and laminated the feet and rough shaped them. 

I have partially shaped the spindles that will suspend the cradle, but I haven't quite decided yet what I want to do with them.  You can see in the photo above, the through mortise that will will hold the rail.  I'm going to laminate the rail from the cherry and some walnut.  I also bought a walnut dowel to do the pinning, so the walnut should offset the cherry.  It won't be as obvious as the cherry ages, but it will look sharp initially. 

For reasons that ought to be obvious, I want the head of the spindle to look a bit like the headstock of a guitar.  I am thinking of putting dowel pins along the "headstock" to suggest tuning pegs, but we'll see.  It might be altogether too cute.  At any rate, hope to finish it next weekend.