The Woodshop Shed

Crib Mobile

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


We were in need of a crib mobile and my wife was on the hunt at local stores, while I was on the hunt for ideas on how I could build it myself. Once I had the concept down I showed my wife and she liked the idea of me building one vs. buying one. It uses old scrap walnut material and is more meaningful, hopefully it's one of those things that can by passed along.The design needed to be strong enough to hang like cantilever on a stud and the arm needed to be adjustable as the little one becomes more interested in grabbing things. I decided to build the base out of walnut and mortise two “turrets” that would sandwhich the arm with all thread and washers. I used a long walnut chunk and lapped it in the middle to add another pivot point. The arm is held at the base and at the elbow by a long piece of all thread that has a nylox nut and cap nut which have Loctite on them. However, as you move the arms back and forth you can feel the cap nut tighten or loosen. This concerned me but my wife and I are always looking as we move it to make sure the nut is not lose and does not present a choking hazard. On the back of the base are two Keyholes that were routed in for a “faster free” look on the front. On the face is just a little profile that I used to ease up the corners and give some design to the base.I am still new to wood working and always am impressed with the people who seem to have flawless projects. So much so that I was beating myself up when I would produce less than perfect projects. Once I realized every one makes mistakes and lots of people edit their content to hide these flaws, I was less discouraged. In this project I decided to show off my mistakes to hopefully not discourage others as I once was.My mortise skills are very beginner and I had to hide the ugly cut outs by trimming the turrets with small walnut trim (look the back side of the base and you can see that I had to hide the imperfect cuts further by using the ole' glue and sawdust trick.) I am also still not patient with sanding and you may notice some defects in the along the project that could be fixed by spending more time sanding, I'll do this later. The other mistake I made was not holding the base to my router fence hard enough when making the keyholes. You can see that one of them got away from me a tad bit, but they still hold super strong and I have no worries about this.Hope this helps and is encouraging for the dad's like me who want to do something for the kiddo(s). Bonus points, the wife made the hanging part as well from a hoop, string, and some yarn.Sorry some Pictures are sideways, didn't have the time to figure out how to re-orient them.Mason

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