Bassinet Rocker 3 Finished Photos

When applying a finish, you do not want dust from another project floating around and tainting the beauty of your hard work.  I always try my best to finish more than one project at a time without any new projects being started, so that they can all stay nice and clean.   This way I don’t have a clear satin finish getting mucked up by my sawdust from the next project on the list.  I mean that would just be stupid, right?  So in a relatively dust free area I applied a Jacobean stain.  For some projects I prefer a gel stain, but for this one a liquid was sufficient.  Liquids are less flexible, but much easier, and since this was all newly sanded bare wood, the simplicity of the liquid stain was perfectly acceptable. 

After allowing the stain to fully soak in and air out some I applied the first coat of a satin poly finish.  The second coat was, as usual, much quicker and better coverage to apply.  I let coat two dry completely for two days and lightly sanded before applying the final coat.  This smoothes out any little bubbly imperfections that may have risen out of the wood under the surface, removes any little dust particles and flattens the texture just a little bit.  Sanding with a light paper also gives the final coat tooth to grip itself into, which keeps the finish lasting longer down the road.  The third and final coat went on clean and smooth.

Bassinet Rocker 2

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. 

I poured a nice cup of dark Jacobean coffee since that was the color of the finish that had yet to be applied and admired this delicate yet sturdy structure that consisted of forty-two pieces all snugly fit, and doweled.  It only had one road block which had a simple solution and was caught before gluing.  Constancy of size, consistency of cuts and a few organic flowing shapes to make the outer frame provided a reasonably quick manufacture and assembly of an attractive, functional piece of furniture.   Next we’ll finish and deliver.

Bassinet Rocker 1

Just as in any new project there must be a plan.  There is a high likelihood that something will have to break away from that plan when making something for the first time.  The plan is still the most useful tool you will have when working your way around the corners and across the different levels of completion.  There will always be something overlooked or at least under planned.  Before finding out the hard way and finish cutting the end of a piece or the length of a stick, you check your plan and ask yourself.  How does it all go together?  Will it hold the way you want it to?  Where is the weight going to be held?  What type of joint will be strongest?  What joint will be the most attractive?  What will serve as both?  When all these questions are answered you can have the confidence needed to cut the piece of wood and know without a doubt that you won’t be going back to the lumberyard to get more wood, which could still happen even with a plan.  As the saying goes, measure twice and cut once.

I started in the middle, because my client had picked out a mattress pad that was 15” by 30”.  Whatever I was going to build, it had to be worked around that mattress.  I figured that the length of 30 wouldn’t be an issue at all, but the 15” width would be what determined the shape of this rocker.  The base of the mattress can’t be too high or it would be too tippy.  The arc at the bottom can’t be too tight or it would also be too tippy.  There is also an angle of the legs reaching outward towards the top as if opening up to the sky above.  So the end pieces are where I started sketching.  I drew the samples on construction paper using nominal numbers for dimensions and angles.  I would then cut them out and test the rocking feature on the table top imagining the center of gravity and stopping point of the rock to see if it would want to tip over or not.  After about three or four samples I had the dimensions I was looking for functionally and appealing structurally.

At this point I could start figuring out how the joints were going to function.  How was I going to keep the weight of the baby held by the legs and not by the joints?  What I came up with was a cut out in the leg itself.  A notch if you will congruent to the angle of the leg as a place for the mattress frame to rest on all four corners.  The mattress frame would have a rabbet joint that way both the width pieces and the length pieces would have to rest on the notch in the leg.  With the rabbet on the width piece there would be no end grain showing from any side.  All other joints I decided on mortise and tenon would be the most appealing and structurally sound. 

All that was left in the design stage was choosing a species of wood and a finish.  After some thought and market availability, I decided to use birch.  I was toying with either birch or maple, since both are commonly used in baby products and have stability and strength.  Of the two, birch was more available at the time.  I chose a handful of stains that I thought would be pleasing to my client who wanted a darker finish.  I sampled all of my selections and brought them to her, for a final choice.  Everyone who had a chance to see the three colors all liked the same sample so with a unanimous decision it was very easy to finalize the finish.  

When a plan comes together as smoothly as this, you can’t help but feel that you are on the right track.  If only every decision in my life were so obvious.  It seems, however, that making the wrong choices in life is part of the grand adventure.  Having a plan is important so that your compass is always pointing north.  Recognize where you want to be so that you can stay directed towards your goals.  There are multiple paths to get to any given place.  If you fall off the path don’t panic.  Instead take in your surroundings, admire them and analyze how they can work toward your goals.  Check your compass and then keep moving forward.