Modern Nativity Scene Crib Out of a Single Glued Board

I wanted to build a modern style crip for Christmas since my wife bought new figures. The figures are 12cm in height and the crib should be maximum 20cm in depth. That are the parameters I had to deal with.

I had a spare glued board with 40x80cm which worked almost perfect for my needs.

There is still some material left from the board, maybe I will use that for further decoration of the nativity scene.

To build that beautiful Crib you will need:

• A single board in 40 x 80 x 1,8cm

The following tools are necessary:

• A jigsaw
• Sanding paper (80-120 / 220)
• Wood glue
• Masking tape
• Ball end mill

To illuminate the Crib you need:

• A battery pack with switch (Amazon)
• A bright enough LED
• Or s String light (Amazon)
• Connectors (Wago 221 or similar) (Amazon)
• Wire cutter

Nice to have:

• CNC with suitable endmill
• Table Saw
• Router with rounding cutter

If you google for "modern Nativity Scene" you get a ton of Designs, but not exactly what I was searching for.

I did a few drawings and came up with the pent roof design and the two archways.

Attached you will find the *.dxf file and some pdfs to print out if you don't have a CNC.

At first you need to cut out the parts from the glued Board.

Therefore I used my CNC and the table saw. All the parts can also cut with a jigsaw or a scroll saw, no bigger equipment is necessary. Just keep in mind that if you don't miter the parts, you have to subtract the material thickness.

First I used the Table Saw to cut the Board in two more handy pieces with ~20x80cm. I then clamped one of the pieces to my CNC and started milling. The front and the back were pretty straightforward, the 6mm endmill finished the task within a few minutes and then continued with the other walls.

To get more light into the crib I added some Windows. The frames were milled deeper into the Board to add some contours.

With a Saw, I cut the supports of the parts and continued with the side parts.

The roof parts were later cut to size with the table saw. Since the board was already 20cm in width, I just had to saw the roof to the wanted length.

Important

The edge of the lower roof, which rests against the wall, must be sawn at a 19 degree angle. That is to ensure that the roof fits nicely to the wall.

I also used the table saw to miter the edges of the walls to 45 degrees.

Since pine is a soft wood and I used a upcut endmill, I had to deal with a lot of tear out which I had to clean afterwards. For the overall cleaning, I used sanding paper with 80-120 grit.

Also I used my router and a rounding cutter to create a nice round edge at the archways.

Make sure to use up milling so that the the cutter and feed (the wood) moves in opposite direction. That means the endmill rotates clockwise and you have to pull the wood towards you.

Since the material I used is 18mm thick, I wanted to add a so called "Swiss edge" to the roof parts. That is a technique often used for tables to make the Tabletop look thinner, you just have to cut a slight angle to the side of the pieces.

To do so, I tightened a wooden block to my saw sledge and used it as fixture for the parts.

I tilted the saw blade to an angle of around 20 degree, moved it upwards and cut the edges as planned.

Why 20 degrees? I wanted to have around 9mm left at the edge and the overhang of the roof is around 2,5cm. With the help of "tangent" I calculated: 19,8° = tan-1(0,9/2,5).

I didn't liked the look of the plain pine as the roof plates and wanted to add some kind of modern texture to them.

For example I tried a brushed surface using a wire brush and the cordless drill, but the effect was not visible from further away. Several attempts later I had the idea to use a 6,3mm radius ball mill to create some kind of hammered surface.

With the drill press it was a pretty straightforward process, most important is to keep the structure "as random as possible". Vary the position and depth of the holes to improve the pattern.

After more than 500 drillings, I used sanding paper to smoothen the surface a bit. I like such structures that give personality to even the smallest projects.

I used wood glue and masking tape to glue the parts together. To do so, just put wood glue on the miters and connect the parts with the tape. Make sure that the tape is pulled tightly in order to press the parts together.

Make sure that the surface where you glue the crib is flat, so that the crib doesn't wobble afterwards

Also use a carpenters square to check that the parts are correctly aligned. The masking tape should be enough to hold the parts safely in place, leave the part until the glue has hardened.

Unfortunately my table saw is kind of cheap, so 45 degrees of the miter joints often doesn't work properly.

I recently have seen a video about how to close the ugly gaps at the miter joints.

After the glue died, just use a screwdriver and gently move the metal gently up and down over the edge. Make sure to keep a consistent pressure on the screwdriver and move it slightly around the corner until the gap is closed and you get a nice round edge.

To finish everything, use Sanding paper to get a smooth surface.

To shed a light in the shed (I have no clue if that is grammatically correct :-) ), I used a spare battery-powered led fairy light and cut of a single LED.

The battery pack will stay behind the Crip, so I drilled a 3mm hole into the back for the cabling.

I then connected the LED to the battery pack with the help of two WAGO connectors.

As you can see, the single LED is absolutely enough to beautifully illuminate the whole Crib.