Unfortunately things went downhill from here.  I was attempting trying to find the simplest way to build this thing.   I soldered one of the tracks completely through the crossing

The theory goes as follows: All I'd need to do is cut a couple of rails and grind one end to a point so each point would fit cleanly against the track.  I'd then solder them place in place and use a cutting disk to cut the rails and make......INSTANT FROGS!  

As you can see from the picture, the center crossing was way off center and that was my undoing.  I tried the same method with all the other frogs.

  

All the while I was working on this I had the sinking feeling that this crossing was being built with as much finesse as a butcher in a slaughterhouse.  I hoped(and prayed) that if I filled the frogs solder and skillfully wielded a hacksaw blade I'd end up with a working crossing.  The result looked "Ok" but operationally was a nightmare.   I could get cars to roll straight through the crossing but my engines either derailed or the trucks would go off in different directions.  To make things worse, I didn't test my engines on the crossing until I installed it on my layout.  

The picture below pretty much sums up how I felt...

I ended up having to rip out the crossing (plus the roadbed underneath) and start over.

     

The main reason I used the method I described above is that I didn't feel confident in my ability to eyeball the two outer rails first.  I was concerned that I would have to keep re-soldering them because they would be out of gauge with the inner rails and frogs.  I thought I'd end up with a lot of kinks in the rails.  

I spent a couple of weeks thinking/sulking about my disaster and came up with this solution:

I fired up Cadrail and changed the line properties of the crossing by "Fattening" them up so that when the crossing was printed the lines of the crossing were the exact width of the rail base.

  

I could then cut, bend, and solder the two outer rails and be reasonably sure about them being in the correct alignment.  This "Crossover by numbers" method has worked out much, much better.

  

I cut and ground each rail to size to build all the frogs.

  

I also wised up and tested this thing before installing it on my layout.

  

The results?   Appearance: It looks pretty good(just don't look closely).   Operationally: Uh...It works well enough that I'm not in the mood to try a third time.