Heirloom Bassinet

Created this bassinet on commission for a friend's son and his wife. I scoured my collection of Woodsmiths & Shopnote magazines and found nothing that looked right. So I set myself to design one similar to Matt Cremona's design (http://www.mattcremona.com/), big fan of his work by the way.

Step 1: Drawing Up My Plans

I based my scale drawing on Matt Cremona's Bassinet as mentioned in the previous step. His differs in many aspects including the structure of the bassinet and the material was used.

I gave my bassinet a little more width and less height. Made the cage (lack of a better word) a straight box instead of the nice angled cage of Matt Cremona's. In addition to that I made mine out of pine instead of walnut.

Step 2: Cutting the Curve and Making Angles

To begin I cut 3, 8ft 2x4's from my local hardware depot (pun) to correct lengths of each part. Careful to label each piece so that I didn't get confused.

I cut the curve for the rocker first using a thick 36 inch ruler to create the curve. As pictured I used a jig saw, careful to go slow on this part so that the saw makes vertical cut instead of an angled cut. After both curves were cut I clamped the parts together to eyeball the angles. (turned out to be 10 degrees)

Step 3: Cutting the Joints

Marking a measuring done I cut the through mortise joints.

Step 4: Added Plywood and Waited

For the plywood center I cut a mortise with the dado blade on the table saw. Mortise was cut all around the plywood for added strength and looks. To fancy things up a bit I used hardwood plywood.

Step 5: The Cage

Still need a better word than CAGE. How about sides of the bassinet.

The sides, law requires that the dowels be no more than 2.5 inches apart. This is so the little guy/gals head doesn't get stuck...

Drilled holes 1/2 inch deep and dry fitted the pieces together. On glue up make sure you check that everything is square.

Step 6: Final Construction

Attached the sides with screws for each rail. Rocks like a dream.

Step 7: Painting

I was really rushed painting the bassinet as the baby had just been born. So I slapped some paint on there, and promised a free repainting if need be.