Madness in Miniatures: 1/12 Scale Paneled Cradle

This is a pseudo commissioned piece that I said yes to before I learned just how much would be involved, but as it is for a club member I am delving into it after too long a delay. The plan comes from Harry W. Smith's "The Art Of Making Furniture In Miniature" book.

First off the deck are panels. The book describes hand sanded raised panels, but the above photo does not show raised panels. I decided to raise some in oak to see how they would look. Using the dimensions from the plans the panel progress is shown below.

A note to safety here. Partly because kickback sends pieces into the great beyond never to be seen again, and mostly because even though they are small they leave the saw with considerable velocity I always use feather boards. They are just as important on a modeler's saw as on a larger one. I had a kickback during this process that was enough to actually break off the front feathers on the vertical featherboard. I shudder to think how much force it absorbed. I was able to make a new featherboard from some cherry stock I had that was already thicknessed to the same as the original. Think I will save this cherry stock for further featherboards as needed.

Trimming thicknessed stock to width.

Dremel router set up to raise panels.

Routing the long edges.

Long edges routed.

Trimming panels to width. Again as for full size tools, a stop block is clamped to the fence to prevent cutoff pieces from being kicked back.

Clamping against a block with end flush to the table to route the ends of the panels.

Routed panel end.

Raised panels completed. The edge will fit a 1/16th inch dado in the frame pieces, the next step in the build process.

Dremel router table set up with 1/16" flat end mill bit. Cardboard table is for zero clearance, side guides for centering the dadoes.

Lower rail being dadoed.

Finished dado.

Main dadoes completed.

Side panels seated for fit.

Side center posts dadoed and fitted for panels

Upper panel dadoes done and small panels fitted.

After rethinking some of the rails and coming to the realization that the frame members need to be the same size as the panels they are embracing in the dadoes, I went back to the router. After some judicious trimming and tenoning I ended up with this.

The bottom rail at 1/8" square was not sufficient to take both the side and bottom dadoes, so I made new with the same stock as the upper rail. The top slot and the bottom slot are offset enough for stability. After trimming the side center support to the height of the side panels I re routed the tenons and glued the side panels to the rails.

Next I glued the head end panels together and while that was drying trimmed and retenoned the side panel ends to fit the leg dadoes. The top of the back panel needs to be trimmed to fit the leg dadoes and/or the leg dadoes need to be adjusted, but that is a job for tomorrow.

I just realized that the legs are swapped over and the rocker slot orientation is 90 degrees off in the lower picture. I must be careful to orient these correctly when it comes to glue...

While the box glue dried I decided to do the finials.

Time passes.....

I turned some dowel from the tight grained stock I have been using and redid the finials I did yesterday. The commercially obtained oak dowels were just too coarse so I opted for a white"hardwood" and would have had to stain them to match, or not. New finials are closer to the scale drawings and look better in oak.

The first pair in white "hardwood".

One of the replacement pair in oak.

One of the head end finial knobs in oak.

Cutting out rockers.

Rockers and finials completed, will add pix later.

Remaining is to mount the finials and rockers, and frame and place the draft stopper side panels which I will do tomorrow, and deliver it to it's new owner tomorrow evening.

Here is the dry fit of finials and rockers.