This cradle was made to celebrate the birth of Ivan Tony DeHaas. It is made of Honduran Mahagony with Macassar Ebony details. All finishing was done prior to final assembly -- which made for an exciting glue-up, but *much* easier finish regime. The boards were initially hand-planed and sanded with 220 on a random orbital sander. The grain was then raised with distilled water and knocked off with a 320-grit pad in the sander. Sealer coat is *thin* coat of 50/50 boiled linseed oil & turpentine. After this cured, 7 coats of garnet shellac (some of my last stock from Paddy... dunno where I'm going to order from now that he's gone) were put down. The initial two coats were a  2 lb. cut that was then thinned to 1 lb. for the final five coats. After the shellac cured, it was hand-rubbed out with micromesh (1500, 1800, 2400, 3200, 3600, 4000, 6000, 8000 and 12000 grits), then given a final polish with Rottenstone lubricated with mineral spirits. 

Total working time was about 50 hours spread out over three weeks. Now that I have the design finished, the templates made and the construction procedure down, I could probably do another one in around 25 hours (about a third of which would be doing the finish.) I don't have any other pregnant friends at the moment, so it will have to wait for now...

Construction notes follow these four pics. Everything you see is copyright 2002 by Loyd Blankenship. All rights reserved. You can use my pattern for non-commercial purposes, see below.

The cradle started life in 3D Studio MAX. A render of the top-right viewport provided the template outlines for bandsawing the ends. If you want to use the design for non-commercial purposes, here's a link to the enormous .TIF file used for the outline.

This let me tweak the shapes until I got a version I liked. Here's a render of the final version.

I used a render of the on-end viewport to make a paper pattern, from which I cut an MDF template. Below is my first version of the paper pattern, which I decided was too small. It is attached to the template for the final version.

The original lumber was a pair of 8/4 mahogany boards -- one 8" wide, the other 6" wide. The 6" piece was bookmatched and used to make the end panels. The 8" piece was bookmatched to form the sides and bottom. Here's the 6" board.

The case is joined using #20 biscuits. The faux tenons and the edge detail are ebony.