I acquired a bunch of rough sawn 6X6s and a few slabs from a friend so my mind started running. I saw a bed in that pile. And it just so happens that my daughter needs a bed, as she's about ready to move out of her crib. As I'm trying to learn more about timber framing, I decided on a few ground rules: - No power tools unless absolutely necessary or they are massive productivey enhancers - Bed needs to be traditional joinery with no metal fasteners (exception for the platform where I used a few screws) - Accept a full or queen size mattress - Use the free wood I got for the frame - Make my own pegs (also from free wood) If any of you have been following my fits and starts (sometimes I come out of the woodwork to post on here, pun intended - over the years I've slowly been building up my woodworking capacity, I built a bench 2 years ago and then focused on skills and tool improvements since. So this project represents the latest and greatest in all regards, and I got to use a lot of new tools & skills on this bed. Trying to make some sense of this mess. Hand tools applied here as well, all the beam cuts and headboard cuts were by hand with a 24" Stanley saw. Timbers cut to length The new boring machine got a LOT OF USE on this project, definitely sped up making mortises! The machine is in pretty good tune now, although I need to learn how to sharpen bits better. Hit all the pieces with my Paul Sellers scrub plane conversion... worked great! Raw headboard stock and timbers before I started. To be continued...
More pics of the pieces going through planing and headboards have been cleaned up. Got the first corner post mortises completed...
Fitting up joinery and getting the rails/headboard/footboard joints together! Using a housed mortise and tenon for the rails. 3.5" tenon with a 1/2 inch housing. Head/footboard are 2X8X2" tenons (in retrospect, should have gone 4".... learning!)
The rails, my goal was to cut into them to allow for lap joinery in the framework and sink the mattress platform in a bit. That's where I used a circular saw (feeling shame/guilt!). The design seemed to work pretty well, probably not the *most* efficient use of space and material/overkill, but happy with the result. Got the bed put together and my daughter gave it a quick test. Approved! Next I got the lap joints cut for the stringers, which I *cheated* and used store bought doug fir but I wanted them to be strong and I didn't have any other material left. The front/back of the frame I cut a notch so they rode higher so it'd cover the end of the plywood platform. If you see the tape on the joints, it's labeling them, they're hard to tell apart when all the wood is in a pile and keeps moving around!
Next was pegs! I wanted to make my own pegs, so I rived a scrap of black walnut. Wood worked great (for interior joints, not for exterior use), the piece I had was just long enough. If I did it again, I'd want to cut the pegs from a longer piece so I had more to work with. Without having a horse, I drew them with my drawknife in my vise. Got it down to about 10 minutes a peg, but I needed 16 of them. I used 3/4" pegs for the rails and 1/2" for the headboard/footboard. This is where I learned that having deeper tenons would have been nice on the headboard as I had to drill the peg holes pretty darn close to the edge. Oh - I also wanted to drawbore, so I assembled the bed (above) and marked all the centers of the peg holes there. Then I disassembled and offset the holes in the tenons 1/16" toward the shoulders so the pegs would *suck* the joints closed. Gotta say, IT WORKED! (as you'll see..) Also got the finish on, doing a basic "Danish Oil - Medium Walnut" rub finish on it. Didn't want to go too heavy, can always embellish later.
And this fits into woodworking how....? Great pics and progress Garry Polmateer And like Canadian border VT said above- heirloom quality, for sure!
And, INSTALLED! Putting it back together was a bit of a chore. I was joking with my wife about the lack of "manufacturer's instructions". I knew the optimal order to put things together, but after 24H outside, the humidity (BLAH) made one of the rails twist about 1/2"!!!!! So I had to modify my routine, and I put the headboard together first, then the rails and corresponding posts, then I used the leverage of the post to twist the rail back to true (with the assistance of 6 ratchet straps and a lot of swearing). The ultimate satisfaction was hammering the pegs in. As they glide in, and you see the joint close up a little more, and then hear the pitch of the peg getting higher and higher as it goes in... AWESOMENESS!!!! IT WORKED!!!! No major issues with pegging but the footboard I had just the start of a split so I backed the peg out and put it in backwards so the narrow end was pointing towards the start of a split. Should be fine, maybe looks a little weird. Overall, I learned a lot, notably how to keep improving my layout skills and what to expect when working with timbers and how much they can move. Also prescribed to some pretty mainstream techniques, and used a reference face(s) on all the pieces to assure consistency. Learned how to make the mortise machine sing, and also built up some arm strength. Very happy with this project. My next one is a solid black walnut kitchen table... can't wait! (I have a single center cut 36" wide double live edge slab for the top!!!) Always more and more and more to learn! THE END OF THIS BUILD!
Ha! That was my company volunteer day, we spent the day sorting food at the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern NY, those folk are on my team!!!!!
Oh, if you're wondering about budget, we spent the following (summarized) Timbers - free/salvage About $70 on plywood and douglas fir 2X4s, needed 2 sheets of plywood. $18 on finish $179 on mattress So we're in about $300... can't complain!
Great work Gary. Do have 2 questions. 1.. what is approximate weight of the bed? 2.. can it be moved from that room without disassembly, or is it a permanent fixture? After all, your daughter will be a teen someday. She may develop different wants. Just thinking out loud here.
Great craftsmanship and good on you for learning joinery and using hand tools as much as possible. I'm going to tag Shawn Curry to take a look at this. Right up in his wheelhouse too.
Question 1 - It weighs about a billion pounds. Okay that's an exaggeration. Probably 2 hundred pounds for the frame. Not light for sure. Question 2 - I don't know of any beds that can be moved in or out without being disassembled To take this apart, it'd just take hammering the pegs back out and the joints should just pop apart. Well, that's the theory.... Maybe I'll learn a few more lessons in a few years about that being a wrong assumption...! Wait, you know a girl who has changed their mind! I have yet to meet one... HA! Hopefully it'll last a while, I know when I grew up, me and my siblings all had the same beds from ~4 years old until we moved out.
