Cradle build

AJBaker · 2025-01-09T10:17:51+0000

I just joined the forum, so I think I'll share some of my past projects with you.

This is a cradle I built for the birth of my daughter in October. In the end, it took longer than expected to build and wasn't done until a week after she got home!

For inspiration I went looking for examples on 1stdibs. When I saw this one, the design spoke to me, I liked the proportions:

I then had to think about what I needed for us. It seemed that 40x90cm was a normal size for a baby mattress, and for height I wanted something we could conveniently have next to the bed. I decided that the bottom of the cradle would lie a bit lower than our mattress, and that the side barrier would be slightly higher.

I'm a fan of using deviders and proportions, so I tried to find something that would work. I decided to divide the length of the bottom by 7 (90cm/7=12.85cm), and to use that as a unit. I decided that the bottom would lie 1 unit (12.85cm) above the rocker, and the top of the side would be 2 units above that (25.7cm, or 38.6cm above the rocker). For decoration of the stiles, I would leave one more unit above that.

For the splay of the sides, I decided to stick with the number 7 marked a 1:7 ratio with my sliding bevel. I decided to only slope the sides, I'm not ready for compound angles yet.

For material I would have to be a bit stingy, cash was tight. We had some leftover tongue and groove boards from a recent job (pine, aprox. 150x22mm), other old and thin tongue and groove boards that I had torn off the walls and ceililing of our future bedroom. From the home centre I sorted through the pine building material and found some bits that would work for the rails and stiles.

AJBaker · 2025-01-09T10:27:01+0000

I'm still limited to handtools, but I'm learning to be quick about getting things done.
I prepared my stock for rails and stiles by planing a face flat (winding sticks to help) and by planing a reference edge that was precisely 90°. For the stiles those would be the sides that faced inwards. For the outside faces it didn't matter if they weren't quite square, so I left them rough for now.

With a 3/8 chisel and a 14" tenon saw I cut mortice and tenons, being careful to correctly transfer my knife lives using a square or sliding bevel.
I was a bit hasty with the placement: I was planing to have the tenons interlock with the tenons of the front and back, but some were a bit too close to each other.

We also decided to have bars instead of a solid side (which added some work and the cost of the dowel rods).

(In the background: the kitchen cabinet I built).

AJBaker · 2025-01-09T10:36:33+0000

For the front and back I wanted to have a top and bottom piece, and to put a panel in between. I cut a groove on those pieces as well as on the stiles with my Record 050 combination plane.

I played around with a compass until I found something I liked and I cut it out with a coping saw, chisels and a rasp. Later on I would add a heart shaped hole for use as a handle.

For the panel, I ended up using bits of old tongue and groove board. It looks ok, but it didn't really save me much work compared to actually making a proper panel.

While I was working on the rails, I needed to cut a haunch on the tenon, but I accidently cut the wrong side. This meant cutting out a mortice on the rail, planing a piece of wood to fit, glueing it in then recutting the haunch on the correct side. Fortunately the repair is on the underside of the rail, so it isn't too noticeable.

AJBaker · 2025-01-09T10:45:15+0000

It was time to have everything start come together. I had used the number 7 during the build, but I couldn't make the cradle with 7 bars per side as the big gap wouldn't be safe. Instead I doubled it to 14 bars per side, which gave a spacing of about 6cm. I used deviders and a marking gauge to mark the spots.

For the bars that would be the sides I bought some 15mm pine dowels and drilled matching holes in the rails (all on the correct side, luckily, but I came close to making a mistake!). This was also my only use of power tools for this project.

I made one mistake when cutting the bars, though: for some reason, I cut them all a cm or two too long. I had to saw off the excess length for all 28 rods.

I also started planing the other surfaces smooth and adding a decorative bead to the outside edges of the rails and stiles. The stiles were made a fair bit thinner, which I should have done earlier in the build.

AJBaker · 2025-01-09T10:52:27+0000

The final piece of the puzzle were the rockers. For the shape I discoved an old episode of the Woodwright where Roy Underhill explains the advatages of an ellipse over a sector or a circle. To draw the ellipse, I put two finishing nails into the top of the stiles and ran a very long piece of string between them and a pencil which I held at where the bottom of the rocker was supposed to be. I didn't take a picture, but imagine a triangle from the top of the left stile to the bottom of the cradle then up to the top of the right stile. By holding the pencil against the string and drawing from left to right I drew an ellipse.

For the joint I cut a mortice in the stile and the rocker and recessed the overlap with a chisel and my Record 071 router plane.

At this point I'm almost done, and my newborn daughter is impatiently waiting for her bed.

I trimmed the ends of the stiles with a drawknife to remove the groove and to make it look nicer. I would have liked to make something more decorative, but there just wasn't time for that. I might someday cut them a bit shorter to have the ends of the stiles and the same height as the back and front.

AJBaker · 2025-01-09T11:09:23+0000

The final steps were trimming off the through tenons, and making a bottom for the mattress. I nailed some scraps to the front and back, and used the same tongue and groove boards for the bottom. They just needed to be planed.

I decided to use soap finish, so I dissolved some aleppo soap we had and rubbed that onto the wood. I still need to add some more to build up a finish, but it's pleasant to touch and completely non toxic.

About a month later I realised that the rockers were longer than they needed to be and made carrying the cradle through a doorway very difficult. I trimmed off the ends to a rounder shape. I'm not sure it looks better, but it's much more convenient, as I can now carry the thing from one room to another.

Looking back, this is one of the nicest things I've built, but I bit off slightly more than I could chew. It took ages to make and I couldn't make much progress on other projects while this was ongoing. Still, I'm very happy with the result and it has a lovely rocking mothion when in use (I got the ellipse just right).
Hopefully my daughter will appreciate the work I put into this project, and maybe she'll use it herself for her children someday!