A couple of nights ago I was out in the garage to work on the trim that would top the rails and footboard of Briana’s crib. One of the lessons (out of many) I’ve learned during the process of building this crib is not to cut everything ahead of time. The pieces I had cut a while ago were a few sixteenths of an inch short – all three pieces. So I ripped two new pieces for the long pieces and used one of the old long pieces to shorten for the cross piece.
Once I had the pieces ripped and cut to proper length, I realized that these would be pieces that Briana would be grabbing eventually. I decided to I wanted to round over the edges, but had no desire to setup my router table. As seen before, my router table is one of those 15″x30″ prefab tables from Craftsman. When not it use, it gets piled up in a corner in the garage; this is especially the case when I have a huge project (such as this crib) taking up space. I really didn’t feel like getting it out, clamping it to my bench table saw, and setting up the roundover bit. As it turns out, I’m not the only one who feels this way. Instead I clamped each piece of trim in my quad screw vise and grabbed my block plane:
This isn’t one of the pieces from my recent purchase, but a block plane I’ve had for some time. I just wanted a simple roundover, nothing too dramatic or deep, something to keep a sharp edge away from the baby. I ran several passes across each edge, varying my angle slightly to keep a smooth surface. Even though it was stringy shavings, instead of wispy ones:
…there was still a simple peace in working the wood this way. A little sanding and this trim was ready for glue-up. With pieces that were covering such a long and wide space, I setup my clamps before applying any glue:
Turns out that was a great idea, because I would have been scrmabling quite a bit to get all these clamps in place:
Here’s a couple of close ups of the corner of these assemblies:
You can almost see the roundover detail on the trim in those shots. Next step, I have similar trim pieces that wrap around the cabinet, rails, and footboard – holding those pieces to the base. After that all that is left to make the crib habitable is a couple of coats of shellac. I should probably get back into the garage right now…
It’s looking *really* nice.
Steve, that ain’t lazy…that’s smart. My router table is always set up and all I’d have to do is add a round-over bit. Still, I’d always grab my block plane for doing the job you describe.
Besides, as you suggest, there’s something special about using planes on wood. Briana is going to love her sleeping quarters. Lucky kid.
Cheers — Larry
Kicking Tail! As always, pretty darn impressed…