Hi again buggslife, I don't need to tell you what you are attempting would be difficult enough for an advanced solver with a bit of experience in clue writing competitions such as the weekly versions of Clueless & Peer Review here or those run by National newspapers even with the assistance of some of the free software available (unless you intend making a career of this I imagine the professional packages would not be appropriate).
I assume you have already looked at free packages which will greatly assist in the creation of a grid and the required answer fill (slightly more difficult if you wish to include answers specific to or relating to your father-in-law's other interests). Once you're happy having achieved this then you will want to write the clues. I agree, it's a good idea to look at the composition of clues in puzzles to attempt to get a balance of the variety of clues that a "good" puzzle will have ie anagrams both straight and subtractive, puns, containers, double definitions, cryptic definitions, substitutions, homophones (possibly including spoonerisms), acrostics and composite combinations of those ... (this is not an exhaustive list but off the top of my head the most common to appear).
I think if you submit a thread with 40+ clues for review in a "oney" you're not likely to get much feedback but perhaps 4 at a time with a suitable preamble that you can copy and paste might elicit the type of feedback you're looking for.
Hope this is of some assistance.