A Bad Day in the Shop...

Is better than a good day at work. But a great day in the shop...well, that's even more better...

I took a much needed extended weekend, which unfortunately ends at 7:30 tomorrow morning. The sole aim, with the exception of setting up the Unisaw, was to work on Mike and Christy's crib. Yesterday and today I managed to achieve that goal. And all of you reading this should feel special as I only stopped for the night so that I would have time to write this so you would have something to read :)

The crib is starting to come together nicely. So far I have the legs done, the top rails done and the bottom rails almost done. Read on for pics...

I cut the mortises in the legs Sunday, which, never having made mortises before, was rather nerve wracking. They came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I spent most of my shop time yesterday milling up the rails and drilling the needed holes in the legs. Today was spent making tenons in the rails (another new one on me) and mortising out the top rails for the decorative inserts to be added later. I know it may not sound like a heap of accomplishments, but given my...umm...attention to detail, (OK, I'll say it, I'm anal!) the setup for the different cuts took a while. I made sure to measure at least three times, tested my cuts on scrap, etc. etc. What it really boils down to is a lot of things I did today I had never done before so I wanted to take my time to ensure that I didn't screw up...after all, hard maple isn't the cheapest wood out there and having to recut parts at this point would suck.

At any rate, here's a pic of the dry fit of two legs with their rails. So far so good...still have to tweak the tenons a bit, but its coming along nicely.

I couldn't decide which picture I liked better, so here's another...sans heap of mess in the background:

Posted by Rob at February 24, 2004 9:26 PM