Making Progress: Soft Wood Not So Bad Afterall

In my last post, I mentioned the various difficulties I was having using alder for my changing table. Well, as it turns out, almost all of this was easily preventable! With a bit of reading and some adjustments to my technique, I was able to overcome these challenges, and have been making great progress on the changing table!

Changing Table Woes

This mortise broke as I was attempting to fit
it to its tenon.

Sometimes things don't work out how you planned them.

Top o' the Rocker to ye!

It's really coming together! I turned the last couple of days into solid shop days and managed to tear through the next few steps on the rocker: the front roll, tapered mortises on the top of the chair, and the back posts and spindles — not to mention the initial mounting of the top crest.

Hide Glue, Or How I Intend to Fix my Rocker

Something's not quite right here...

As a rookie woodworker, there's few things that go through my mind more than all the mistakes I'll make. "What if I cut the board too short?" "What if my glue doesn't hold?" "What if...?" Especially concerning for me are those first cuts into good, expensive wood. Once those cuts are made, there's no turning back.

On The Bench: Baby Changing Table

As we get closer to our due date, we're going to start needing more baby furniture. Besides the normal crib-and-dresser-set, we'll need a changing table too. Though we could have bought a dresser with a built-in changing table, we wanted to be able to use our dresser as a normal dresser when our kid is older. So, we opted to buy a normal dresser, and build a removable changing table to put on top.

Bottom Half of the Rocker; Or, How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and Love the Mortise

After what seems like months (it's actually only been one month), the bottom of the chair is cut and dry fit!  The hardest part?  The tapered mortises.  Contrary to how easy I made it out to be in my mortise and tenon post, getting a good tapered mortise and close fitting tenon turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.