This is what a crib looks like before jointing, planing, ripping, cross-cutting, shaping, joining, gluing, sanding, and finishing ... man, I get tired just
typing all the things that still need to be done. Most of the wood on the left is cherry. Several of the boards are 8/4, for the legs and top rails. The wood on the right is curly maple, which will be used for the slats. All the wood is rough-sawn, so it's hard to tell what the boards will look like.
The first step in the process is to
joint each board, which makes one face of the board flat. After jointing, I'll use the thickness planer to make the second face parallel to the first. One minor oversight: some of the boards are 7" wide, but my jointer is only 6" wide. Hmmm. Since it's not safe to cut rough boards on the table saw, I had to trim them down to 6" using the saber saw. I wish I had a band saw, but all in all the jointing went very well.
The third picture shows all the boards with one face jointed. The color of freshly cut cherry is surprising: it's more like a pink or salmon than the deep reddish brown you'd expect. I met a guy at a an art show that told me to leave the finished crib in the sun to get that color. You can see his stuff
here.
The last picture shows the curly maple after jointing. Some of the boards are better than others, but it looks great on the edge. My plan is to rip the slats off the side of the boards, so the edge will be the visible part.
This is what a crib looks like before jointing, planing, ripping, cross-cutting, shaping, joining, gluing, sanding, and finishing ... man, I get tired just typing all the things that still need to be done. Most of the wood on the left is cherry. Several of the boards are 8/4, for the legs and top rails. The wood on the right is curly maple, which will be used for the slats. All the wood is rough-sawn, so it's hard to tell what the boards will look like.
The third picture shows all the boards with one face jointed. The color of freshly cut cherry is surprising: it's more like a pink or salmon than the deep reddish brown you'd expect. I met a guy at a an art show that told me to leave the finished crib in the sun to get that color. You can see his stuff here.
Last weekend we took the first step on our next project -- building a crib for our baby boy. The design is a three-in-one sleigh bed: it can be configured as a traditional crib, a toddler-size bed, or a regular twin-size bed. We're starting with a plan from InovateUSA, but we'll probably make style modifications. I ordered hardware from Rockler.
On Saturday we drove up to New Hampshire to buy wood from Sharp's Lumber. They were recommended to me by the guy I bought my jointer from. The company is run by Steve Sharps and his son Jamie, and you can't imagine two nicer guys. They spent a lot of time with us, letting us pick through piles of cherry and curly maple. Three generations of Sharps live on the property in houses they built themselves.
The top picture shows the inside of the lumber shop, which is filled floor-to-ceiling with amazing hardwood lumber. The second picture is the lumber shop from the outside. The third picture shows a big stack of gorgeous curly maple.
