This entry is all about constancy. If you have constants in your life, of course there is the frequent argument of boredom being born with a lack of spontaneity. I agree with that logic in life, however, when you know what to expect from any given circumstance it makes dealing with any issues far simpler. If you wanted a cup of coffee from that one coffee shop that roasts the beans right there and make each blend by hand but traffic on your usual route was busier than expected, you can determine easily if there is still time or not. I put the creative juices into the plan in other ways. I mill my lumber as standard and constant as I can so I can pour myself the best coffee for the fun parts.
First I calculated the number of pieces and the size of pieces I would need for all the various parts that I would need to build the bassinet. Then I got my tape measure and calculator ready to go to the lumberyard. Selecting the wood isn’t terribly difficult, but it is important. Large imperfections like knots and burls are undesirable in a structure like this. Clean straight grain will be more stable and stronger, not to mention easier to cut cleanly. I also tried to avoid pieces with twists and bends, just because I wanted to minimize the amount of work that would need to go into milling the lumber.
Back at the shop I was ready to start making the pieces to their respective sizes. I needed to rip fifteen lengths of a foot or more in half for the flat sawn spindles. All of the framework would be 3/4” thick and the spindles would be 3/8” thick. For this I used the planer finishing all the frame pieces at once then all the spindles at once. The reason for this is constancy and consistency. Why consistency is so important will come later, so just trust me on this for now. After planning the thickness of all the pieces I cut them to length leaving all of them a few inches longer than needed then I jointed one side with the freshly planed surface against the fence to create a perfect 90 degree angle and marked the finished side. Then I ran the last remaining surface through the planer at the desired width of the board. Now with all the pieces available for finishing I roughly laid out how they would go together just to double check that I had the correct amount and size of each piece.
Since the planning started with the mattress frame I started with cutting the lengths and the rabbet joints and worked my way outward. Next I laid out the notches in the legs that the corners of the frame would set into. The rest was all mortise and tenon work. For the mortises, I used a slotting tool on a router table. For the tenons I built a tenon jig to be used on the table saw. If you ever plan a job and you want to make tenons simple and accurate, this is by far the best way. It is a simple thick block, perfectly squared corners with a vertical stop and a handle. You clamp your piece to the block first on one side then the other standing on end and cut it once on each side. The result will be a perfectly centered tenon in between two equal cuts with a piece of scrap left over. This is when the importance of consistency shows why it is important. We have two legs, two arcs two top rails two and thirty spindles all needing tenons. Since all were planed to the exact same dimension as the next we can set our saw fence one time and using our tenon jig we can make all the cuts from one tedious set up and the results will be precise and equal throughout our project. The same will happen with the mortise. Using one set up of the router table we can cut all our mortises at the same dimension from center since all of the pieces are exactly the same thickness. Believe me, you do not want to set up these cuts and find the precise fit for each joint. It will take up so much time you will have forgotten what you are building and your patience for the project will wither away to nothing. You will be that person who said they were going to make something but its remains unfinished until spring cleaning the following year when they get thrown away. Stay consistent and this won’t be your plight.
After removing the scraps along side the tenons, I trimmed the tenons to the correct shape of the existing mortises on the scroll saw. A band saw would likely be even better, but my tenons weren’t very thick, maybe a quarter inch thick, and the scroll saw was already out so to save time, I just dove right in. With all the tenons and mortises ready I could begin to dry fit the pieces. Dry fitting is good to do when ready so that you can be sure everything is going to line up the way it needs to when finishing assembly. There will certainly be some trouble shooting when fitting 44 pieces together tightly. Sure enough one of my spindles was slightly long. If I had started pegging and permanently attaching all the pieces I would have run into a nasty problem.
With all the pieces going together I could start dabbing little bits of glue into some of the mortises and drilling for dowels in the larger corner joints. Once all the pieces were together, I tested the mattress frame, in the legs with the bottom installed with some weight, just to make absolutely sure the joints could handle some stress. 64 pounds later, I put in the last of the dowels, took some photos and set it aside for finishing, which would have to wait for another project to be at the same level of completion.
