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My son is expecting his first child around the end of September. In a recent phone call, our wives decided that it would be a great father-son project if we built a crib together. Sounds to good to us too, however we sort of have a logistics wrinkle. He lives about 2 hours west of Chicago and I live about two hours east of New York. So the plan is to have each of us build part of the crib, I fly to visit him, probably soon after the birth, and we finish the project together.

Now we are both engineers, capable of reading drawings and contracting out work so sharing this shouldn't be too hard (he says, optimistically). I note that Rockler has a crib plan for sale AND, more importantly, crib specific hardware. The Rockler design looks close to what the expecting parents like (although the wives are reviewing designs as we speak).

My plan is to buy both the plan and hardware package from Rockler. (15% off sale until 6/27.) Once we have the plan, we can understand how the crib specific hardware is employed and modify the plan to get the style the wives like but have it still work with the Rockler hardware. Then one of us will build the ends and the other the sides, OR we will each build one end and one side, OR ???? For myself, I would like to build at least one end and embelish it with some an inlay (marquetry) to make the crib special and unique.

So, on to the questions:

Question 1 - Does anyone have experience with the Rockler crib plan and/or the crib specific hardware? Please comment.

Question 2 - Can anyone offer suggestions on how do deal with the logistics of us collaborating on the project from two differnt locations?

Thanks,

Bill Leonhardt

Reply to
Bill Leonhardt
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"Bill Leonhardt" wrote in news:vY8Ac.11787$ snipped-for-privacy@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:

That would put your home in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. ;-)

Reply to
Woodchuck Bill

I can't answer #1 but would suggest that any joinery be left until all parts are in the same place, esp if there are mortise and tenons involved.

djb

Reply to
Dave Balderstone

Only if he can swim at 500 miles an hour.

Reply to
Michael Mcneil

Bill Leonhardt asks:

Can't help you with #1, but I have a suggestion for #2. Select measuring instruments at the start, coordinate and calibrate as necessary, and do NOT use any others. Too, when ripping to width, crosscutting to exact length and so on, have one person do the entire particular job, so fits will be more exact. As an engineer, you probably already know all this, but it's what my exhausted brain, after two days of moving, comes up with.

Enjoy and keep us in the loop.

Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Dorothy Parker

Reply to
Charlie Self

[1] Make the largest / most delicate parts at the assembly location. [2] Agree ahead of time on units of measurement (take a lesson from the NASA/JPL experience). [3] E-mail progress pictures back and forth (-:
Reply to
Morris Dovey

Ever drive from New York to Boston? Or out to the end of Long Island?

Reply to
J. Clarke

Reply to
nospambob

Nahh, he said two hours --- East of NY implies somewhere out on the sand spit known as Lon-Gyland. It can easily take an hour to make if from NYC to Garden City if traffic on the Long Island "Expressway" (LIE -- what an appropriate acronym) is bad. Alternately one could take one of three or four other roads roughly parallel to the LIE -- that would afford the option of viewing the large numbers of defunct Italian restaurants, strip joints, and auto body (strip) shops that populate the middle of the island. None of this should be taken as an indictment of the people who live in the area --- they are by and large good people. The social agregate is, however, interesting from the perspective of a midwesterner.

hex

-30-

Reply to
hex

I'd suggest looking at the division of labor in light of the areas where continuity is called for.

You can both read plans and have a handle on woodworking. Fine, put it to use. Do you really want a crib made from wood that is bought by two people in two different locations or a finish done likewise? That is not even considering what staining under those circumstance can look end up looking like.

The same can be said for assembly. Do you finish half of the cradle in Ill. and half in N.Y.? What happens if someone is a hair or two off and the person doing the finial assemble, your son I would presume, has to make some modifications? Will he have to screw up an already applied finish to make things fit, try to stretch a tenon, move a mortise?

Reply to
Mike G

I can reply to question 1. I made one for my God daughter several years ago. I found the plans easy to follow. The only thing that they were a little vague was radiusing the slats. The slats are (I'm doing this from memory) 1/2 inch thick. The plans call for a 1/4" round over bit to be used. This works fine with the pilot bearing on one side, however, when you turn the slat over the bearing rides on the curved surface so the cut is too deep. I used a router table with a 1/8" round over giving the slats a squared off appearance. I think that a pin router would have worked to give me the round edges that were specified.

All in all, the results were beautiful. I made it from cherry. I used lye to darken the cherry and finished it with 5 coats of Watco natural danish oil. My God daughter's parents were (and still are) thrilled with it.

Grant

Bill Le> Skip to the end for the question(s).

Reply to
Grant P. Beagles

Bill,

One of you makes the crib (insures everything matches and the kid has a place to sleep before he's old enough to vote...:) and the other builds the (pick one) changing table, dresser, playpen, rocking horse, highchair, swing set - you get the idea.

Bob S.

Reply to
Bob

Ugh, this reminds me of my drive to Maine. Travelling across New York from West to the East is only a hair better than travelling South through Indiana. At least upstate New York has some scenery to keep you entertained. Mark

Reply to
Werlax

If the crib hardware works like most crib hardware, I would suggest that exact side length is not all that critical, but that the two sides should have closely matching lengths. The same applies to the width of the ends. This seems to suggest having one person do the sides and the other do the ends. At least that way you should end up with square corners. Imagine if you built one end 1/4" longer than your son, and one side a 1/4" shorter. Rhombus instead of rectangle.

I'd suggest that you save finishing till the parts are all in one place. You might want even want to save drilling the holes for the slide rails till final assembly.

This is how Airbus Industries builds airplanes, so how hard can it be? ;-)

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.

Reply to
ranck

what a wuss.

if you use inches I'm going with metric. you go metric I use inches.

Reply to
bridger

Noooo.. Two hours east of New York is only about

12 miles....

Woodchuck Bill wrote:

Reply to
Pat Barber

Since you are both engineers, one or both of you prolly has access to AutoCad. See if you can load the plans from Rockler into AutoCad via raster to vector conversion. Print out the parts on a plotter, so that you can have full sized paper templates for the parts.

You can do the construction in parallel operations this way. I'd agree on a sanding schedule, so that you can bring the pieces up to the same grit level, save the last.

I'd arrange to meet up and do the final sanding and finishing together

- it might make for a nice Saturday.

Regards, Tom.

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

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Reply to
Tom Watson

Thanks group,

I appreciate your input on our multi-locational approaches to the crib construction. We'll most likely. make the sides one, the ends the other, and appy finish and assemble together.

I also appreciate your comments on the Rockler plans.

When we finish, I try to post some pictures on A.B.P.W.

Bill Leonhardt

Reply to
Bill Leonhardt

Reply to
nospambob

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