Special Needs Crib

Judy’s best friends’ daughter has been in a wheel-chair most of her life.
Last year she had a baby.
Being in a wheel-chair presents all manner of special requirements for the baby’s crib.
I was asked to customize a 30-year old drop-side crib.
When I assembled it to test the mechanisms, the front side gave out and fell completely apart .
Instead of customizing the drop-side, I built a new crib from scratch.
This crib is built to the mom’s specific requirements and will convert to a toddler bed when he’s big enough to be out of a crib.

It’s made of Ribbon Sapelle and maple, mostly Tiger maple.
The rail/leg joinery is mortise and tenon, the doors are mortise and tenon construction with floating tenons for the slats.
The ends and back side use stub tenons in a groove with spacers between the slats.
The finish is home-brew dewaxed shellac followed by Cabot’s Semi-gloss Polyurethane which my wife did.
It’s her first time finishing a project and the maple really threw her a curve.
As she saw the stripes, she thought she’d created all manner of runs! :-)
The first photo is Alyssa, the second, third and fourth show the grain and the finisher—my wife Judy.
The fiifth and sixth are TJ, mom Alyssa and grandma.

The Picasaweb album with roughly 60 photos documenting the build is here:
Crib build

-- Gary, Florida