I made this swinging cradle in my garage workshop in Sheffield, England.

Firstly, I purchased a 900 x 400mm mattress and scaled my design to fit. I have tried to keep it simple with clean lines to bring out the character of the timber. The cradle is made primarily from four boards of figured English elm, two for the headboard and two for the footboard. I have tried to create a bookmatched effect on the inside faces by using adjacent faces of the elm boards on either side of the midline. I have also used sapele for narrow stripes on the panels. The panels are glued together with biscuit joints.

Mortice and tenon joints hold the side panels together, each consisting of two horizontal lengths of elm with twenty vertical elm rods.

I screwed the side panels into the head/footboards, with the use of sapele plugs to conceal the screwheads.

The stand is made entirely from sapele. The central vertical beam receives lateral support on either side from triangular shaped panels at the bottom. Mortice and tenon joints hold these three vertical pieces within the bottom horizontal panel. The mortices for the lateral two triangular panels are deeper than that for the central panel in order to increase the strength of the joint.

Because I have limited space in my house, it is important that I can dismantle the frame after my baby girl outgrows the cradle. I constructed a frame that simply slides over the top of each end of the stand and is wedged in place by the increasing diameter at the bottom of the frame.

The pendulum mechanism at each end consists of a 60 x 10mm threaded brass rod, two brass washers, two acorn end nuts and six nylon washers to minimise friction. I received a good service and high quality product from this link: http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/store/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=prodshow&ref=19_4135

To finish, I have simply sanded to 240 grit then applied a coat of Monocoat oil (http://www.woodworkshop.co.uk/wood_work_finishes.htm for more info) followed by three coats of teak oil (because it was the only oil that I had in the garage).

My baby girl was born last week and the cradle is in use. My plan is to either use Danish oil or Tung oil to improve the finish when my baby outgrows the crib.

I apologize for the mess in the background!

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