wood plans baby crib

sometimes, as a parent, you have to make your children's bed because they certainly won't. i've been waiting years for this build. i have made all of my children's sleep furniture, starting with my son's crib and toddler bed which were handed down to his sister. and the toddler bed was just sent to my brother for his first son who is soon to be born. my son got his twin bed a bit before i started doing these youtube builds. so this is the first one which is really being documented. what you just watched was me ripping all of the material for the four posts. two pieces of maple and a piece of cherry will be laminated together for each post. i then selected the nicest sections of each and trimmed them all down to rough lengths.

a funny thing when i sorted through all the lumber i picked up. somehow i marked off the cherry center pieces for the headboard and foot board. but only somewhat luckily i had selected an extra piece which had amazing figure for myself. my loss and my daughter's gain. elizabeth was very gracious to spend a fair bit of time helping with the long pieces of this project. i marked out on the components of the posts where they will match up. they will be 3' straight at the bottom. then the outer maple pieces will have a taper from 7/8" to 3/8" over the course of 4'. the first maple piece i hand planed the taper.

3 1/2 hours later i thought better of that and pulled out the bandsaw. i still needed to put in about a half hour of planing per maple piece, but that is a bit more manageable. i then followed up with a card scraper to minimize the sanding later in the project. the lamination process was fairly smooth since i had earlier marked out on the sides how to line up the maple pieces with the center cherry piece. and we get into the old woodworker axiom that you cannot own enough clamps. earlier i had not wasted time jointing these edge pieces since there is inevitably some slip when gluing up the lamination. so now i dreamed of a jointer with longer wings, and called elizabeth to help. i use the tablesaw to rip the opposite face of the posts. and since one taper is not sufficient i made this jig to add a taper along the laminated sides.

there is a block to account for the 1/2" of taper from solid face. only the first 3' of the post is indexed against the jig's fence for the second side. and a little hand planing and scraper is applied to these edges for clean up. now i moved onto the cross pieces for the head board and foot board. each get three, maple, cherry, maple. the headboard pieces are a couple inches larger. i used a dado stack to make the tenons on each end to just over a 1/2". then using a mortising attachment on my drill press i use the 1/2" mortiser the height of the tenons. i start on both ends and then remove the middle material.

i know things are not perfect, but they will get covered by the shoulders of the tenons. and the next step is precisely sizing these with a chisel. i pencil the tenons and jam the tenon into the mortise. when it doesn't fit i still have pencil marks on the sides of the mortises to know where to remove material. and the graphite on the tenons smudges indicating where it rubbed inside the mortise so i can remove high spots. it takes a couple iterations, but it proves to create a snug joint. at this point i did a dry fit to determine how things will line up. specifically where i will trim the posts to get them all even. with that information i trimmed the bottoms all to length and trimmed the tops to be even.

yes, the tops technically are not 90âº, but how many 7' tall folks do you know that will notice. the days are not exactly the stock of basketball players. i grabbed a block plane and put a chamfer on all of the edges. the posts, sides, tops, bottoms, and all of the cross pieces on each edge. sometimes i'd notice some chatter and have to switch direction. the cherry cross pieces were quite devious in this. since i want this bed to be able to be handed down in the future, to my children's children, that isn't a hint elizabeth, i want to add some additional strength to the mortise and tenon to keep it snug. i marked out an inch and change into the joint for pegs for draw boring the tenon.

i drilled through with a backer to prevent blowout on the far side. then put the cross pieces in and used the same forstner bit to mark the center. next at the drill press i marked an 1/8"ish to the shoulder and drilled the holes on the tenons. somehow i made it this far through the project before remembering most beds need bed rails. we planed and jointed them and then cut them to size for a twin bed. i taped off the tenons and stuffed towel into the mortises in preparation for pre-finishing. i sprayed shellac for this project. i'm not sure if i like it more than just wiping it on. i cut a number of pieces of cherry dowel down oversized by about a half inch.

i used a chisel to put a small ramp on the dowel ends to help when draw boring the joint. and used a file to add a slight taper on the tenon hole. a liberal amount of glue was added to the sides of the mortise. the tenon is slid into the mortise. and i lay the workpiece down fully supported by the tablesaw to start driving the pegs. i use a piece of wood between the mallet and dowel to prevent damaging the dowel too much, especially once i get going in earnest. not really shown, but i placed a piece under the post to lift it up so i can drive the dowels so each side has about a half inch proud. i glued the heck out of the mortise walls for the opposite side since this has to all be done at once. lots of hammering later and it is all together.

i used a flush trim saw to trim the protruding dowels. i used some cut off hdpe cutting board material to make a drilling guide for the hardware on the bed rails. then on the posts i used blue tape to mark out the drilling patterns for the mating hardware. i had to make sure i had the right width for a twin size mattress. since i am using a plywood platform i add rails on the inside of the bedrails to support that platform. i use about a dozen screws along the length of the bedrail. the platform is 2" x 2" poplar with 4 cross pieces and 1/2" plywood. since we are getting so long i skipped the matias wandel jumping demonstration, but trust me it supported me jumping on it for a good while. and here is the it is setup in my daughter's room.

yet another bed project i am very happy with and if you couldn't tell from the beginning my daughter loved it also. if you have questions or comments leave them below. thanks for watching and god bless.