Crib Progress

     The last couple of days have been spent selecting and then cutting the majority of the pieces for the crib to their rough sizes.  Boy, there's lots of slats and just like the directions say, they're easiest to cut if you do it on the bandsaw and (in their words) cut it like a slab of bacon.  The plans called for a total of 46 so at this point I have about 60 of them roughed out.  Before I make them the final thickness I need to set up a test piece to get the exact thickness to fir the mortise -- sharpen that chisel set first to make it through the 100 mortises or so.

   One of the techniques the plan called for was this way to cut the required recesses for the Walnut pyramids.  I wasn't too sure about the technique but decided to "follow the directions", it's been a while since I've built something the had directions!  To sum it up, you take your board and cut it into 3 pieces.  Then you cut the recesses with a dado blade installed in the table saw.  Thank goodness for my antique router plane because it was definitely needed to smooth out the bottom of the recesses.  The part I wasn't too crazy about is the next step where you take the center strip and rip it to the exact width of the pyramids.  You can see that this involved removing a good 5/16".  My concern was that once the piece was glued back together the grain pattern wouldn't match up again.  I realize that I'm pretty picky and it wasn't as noticeable as I feared.  This picture shows the pieces after I made it the required size and then planed it smooth.  Hey Jennifer, should I save the shavings for hair on one of the paper bag people?