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#1 ·
Design Evolutions and Finalization

I started designing this bed quite a long time ago. Originally, it was a more arts-and-crafts style, but my wife didn't like the style and asked if I could make some changes. After looking at the bed Marc Spagnolo recently made we made some more changes and ended up with this design:

Rectangle Gas Parallel Engineering Composite material


Essentially the headboard is a set of two frame-and-panel sections with rails set in the groove that the panel is in. We spent some time at a local plywood dealer looking over exotics and veneers and decided to go with walnut veneered plywood for the panels. The rest of the bed aside from the slats is going to be cherry.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the posts are ~3 1/4" square and are tapered at the bottom. I'm not sure exactly how to characterize the design.

The next step after finalizing a design was to find materials.

A couple of months ago I spent a Sunday afternoon driving around to pick up lumber from three different sources I found on Craigslist. Going to three different people each at least 30m apart wasn't ideal, but I was able to get all the lumber I needed (around 50 board feet, including a lot of 8/4) for less than $250. I'd worked out that it would have been at least $400 had I bought the lumber from a dealer, if not more.

As with most of my blog posts, I'm starting this series while pretty close to done with the project. I find the blog series to be a good exercise in reviewing progress so far, and while I'm in the middle of working on the project I tend to not want to spend the time blogging.
 

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#2 ·
Design Evolutions and Finalization

I started designing this bed quite a long time ago. Originally, it was a more arts-and-crafts style, but my wife didn't like the style and asked if I could make some changes. After looking at the bed Marc Spagnolo recently made we made some more changes and ended up with this design:

Rectangle Gas Parallel Engineering Composite material


Essentially the headboard is a set of two frame-and-panel sections with rails set in the groove that the panel is in. We spent some time at a local plywood dealer looking over exotics and veneers and decided to go with walnut veneered plywood for the panels. The rest of the bed aside from the slats is going to be cherry.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the posts are ~3 1/4" square and are tapered at the bottom. I'm not sure exactly how to characterize the design.

The next step after finalizing a design was to find materials.

A couple of months ago I spent a Sunday afternoon driving around to pick up lumber from three different sources I found on Craigslist. Going to three different people each at least 30m apart wasn't ideal, but I was able to get all the lumber I needed (around 50 board feet, including a lot of 8/4) for less than $250. I'd worked out that it would have been at least $400 had I bought the lumber from a dealer, if not more.

As with most of my blog posts, I'm starting this series while pretty close to done with the project. I find the blog series to be a good exercise in reviewing progress so far, and while I'm in the middle of working on the project I tend to not want to spend the time blogging.
Following along, I've been considering building a bed and look forward to picking up some pointers
 

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#3 ·
The Footboard

I started with what I was sure was going to be the easiest part of the bed: the footboard. It's pretty simple: two ~18" high 3 1/4" square posts with a taper on two sides and a ~58" rail.

After milling the parts, I laid out the mortises for the rail and made 3/4" wide, deep (1") mortises to ensure the assembly is as strong as I can make it. I made the mortises with a router and the tenons on the table saw, as normal. Nothing major to report there. I did discover than my table saw fence had somehow come out of perpendicular to the table, though I'm honestly not sure how that happened. It's not as easy an adjustment on my TS3650 as it would be on a saw with a true t-square-style fence, but eventually I got it sorted.

Tradesman Wood Saw Workbench Artisan


I decided to go with a 1" taper starting about an inch below where the rail sits. I cut the taper on the band saw and smoothed out the cut with hand planes. My smoother is in need of a sharpening and some adjustments, and I was too occupied to put everything away to sharpen/adjust it, so I just pulled out my #7 to smooth the legs. That went fine, and sometimes I actually prefer the longer, heavier plane no matter how delicate the work.

Wood Flooring Floor Workbench Hardwood


After I had the tenons fitting properly in the mortises, I started on the mortises for the bed hardware. I ended up going with a set of hook hardware from Rockler that a friend recommended. Based on the size of my rails, I went with the 4-inch set. I would have loved to use the 6-inch set, but my rails are only 5 3/4" wide so there wasn't room for hardware that big on the end of them.

Rectangle Wood Wood stain Audio equipment Hardwood


That's a stock picture from Rockler, but that's essentially what I'm going for. I made the mortises for the hardware in the posts with a chisel and a drill bit for the deeper part that the hooks sit in. After installing the hardware, I rounded over all the outside edges with a 1/4" round over bit.

Here's the dry-fitted almost-finished product:

Table Wood Desk Floor Flooring


Now on to the headboard!
 

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#4 ·
The Footboard

I started with what I was sure was going to be the easiest part of the bed: the footboard. It's pretty simple: two ~18" high 3 1/4" square posts with a taper on two sides and a ~58" rail.

After milling the parts, I laid out the mortises for the rail and made 3/4" wide, deep (1") mortises to ensure the assembly is as strong as I can make it. I made the mortises with a router and the tenons on the table saw, as normal. Nothing major to report there. I did discover than my table saw fence had somehow come out of perpendicular to the table, though I'm honestly not sure how that happened. It's not as easy an adjustment on my TS3650 as it would be on a saw with a true t-square-style fence, but eventually I got it sorted.

Tradesman Wood Saw Workbench Artisan


I decided to go with a 1" taper starting about an inch below where the rail sits. I cut the taper on the band saw and smoothed out the cut with hand planes. My smoother is in need of a sharpening and some adjustments, and I was too occupied to put everything away to sharpen/adjust it, so I just pulled out my #7 to smooth the legs. That went fine, and sometimes I actually prefer the longer, heavier plane no matter how delicate the work.

Wood Flooring Floor Workbench Hardwood


After I had the tenons fitting properly in the mortises, I started on the mortises for the bed hardware. I ended up going with a set of hook hardware from Rockler that a friend recommended. Based on the size of my rails, I went with the 4-inch set. I would have loved to use the 6-inch set, but my rails are only 5 3/4" wide so there wasn't room for hardware that big on the end of them.

Rectangle Wood Wood stain Audio equipment Hardwood


That's a stock picture from Rockler, but that's essentially what I'm going for. I made the mortises for the hardware in the posts with a chisel and a drill bit for the deeper part that the hooks sit in. After installing the hardware, I rounded over all the outside edges with a 1/4" round over bit.

Here's the dry-fitted almost-finished product:

Table Wood Desk Floor Flooring


Now on to the headboard!
Looking nice.

What is your opinion of the "hook type" hardware? I've read elsewhere that it is a weak point since you are screwing into end grain. How long are the screws, and do you think this will be a problem?

Thanks for posting
 

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#6 ·
The Headboard

I started on the headboard, naturally, with milling (and milling, and milling) the various parts down to just larger than their final size. I neglected to take a picture of my wood pile before I started, so you'll have to use your imagination and picture this pile about eight boards high by two across. This picture is after I got done with the headboard pieces:

Wood Floor Flooring Gas Automotive exterior


I had to get parts for the two posts, a bottom rail, and an upper and lower rail for the panels at the top of the headboard from my 8/4 lumber, and a middle stretcher that primarily serves to prevent pillows from falling behind the headboard from 4/4 stock. Here's an intermediate photo of the fruits of all that milling. I wish there was something better to do with sawdust than to bag it up and throw it out.

Table Wood Floor Desk Flooring


Each of the four horizontal pieces needed a mortise and tenon, and things were further complicated by the fact that among those four boards there were three different thicknesses (1 3/4", 1 1/4", and 3/4"), which meant three different mortise and tenon sizes.

I ended up decided to use a 3/4" mortise/tenon for the bottom, largest rail, a 1/2" for the upper and lower panel rails, and a 3/8" for the middle pillow blocker. Once I got the router and edge guide set up, it actually went fairly quickly with my daughter helping me keep the chips somewhat under control. Despite cutting all the pieces to the exact same length and using the exact same setup on the table saw (aside from blade height) to cut the tenons, somehow I ended up with a couple of gaps on a couple of the pieces where the shoulders did not fully sit tight to the post. Initially I thought it was because the tenons themselves were too long, but that proved to not be the case. What happened was that somehow one or more parts of the shoulders of various pieces ended up being cut too narrow, so the post bumped up against that and prevented the other sides from sitting flush.

I tried finessing things with a shoulder plane and got it a bit better, but eventually gave up because of the difficulty of test fitting, finessing, test fitting, et cetera. The pieces are really heavy! I think this bed might be a bit overbuilt.

Wood Floor Hardwood Gas Wood stain


Once I had the posts done and the tapers cut and smoothed there, I moved on to the panels. My wife and I spent a good amount of time deciding exactly how I should cut the walnut veneered plywood panel to best showcase its grain with the cherry. I think we came up with a good solution. I had to cut a groove in the top and bottom rails and stub tenons in the stiles to go between them. The stiles also needed grooves, and the panels cut to fit. That all went fairly smoothly.

Wood Hardwood Flooring Machine Gas


I decided to use those little rubber balls (Space Balls, Rockler calls them) in the groove to keep the panel centered yet allow it to move freely. I don't expect the plywood to move much, but better safe than sorry. Here's the stiles, rails, and panels dry fitted together. I love how it looks and can't wait to get finish on it. I think the wife will be shocked how good the walnut and cherry look with a clear finish on them.

Wood Wood stain Workbench Hardwood Plank


One decision left: gloss or semi-gloss finish? I plan to use Arm-R-Seal, which is my go-to for clear finishes. I had the idea to put on two or three gloss coats followed by a semi gloss to finish it up. Any thoughts on that?
 

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#7 ·
The Headboard

I started on the headboard, naturally, with milling (and milling, and milling) the various parts down to just larger than their final size. I neglected to take a picture of my wood pile before I started, so you'll have to use your imagination and picture this pile about eight boards high by two across. This picture is after I got done with the headboard pieces:

Wood Floor Flooring Gas Automotive exterior


I had to get parts for the two posts, a bottom rail, and an upper and lower rail for the panels at the top of the headboard from my 8/4 lumber, and a middle stretcher that primarily serves to prevent pillows from falling behind the headboard from 4/4 stock. Here's an intermediate photo of the fruits of all that milling. I wish there was something better to do with sawdust than to bag it up and throw it out.

Table Wood Floor Desk Flooring


Each of the four horizontal pieces needed a mortise and tenon, and things were further complicated by the fact that among those four boards there were three different thicknesses (1 3/4", 1 1/4", and 3/4"), which meant three different mortise and tenon sizes.

I ended up decided to use a 3/4" mortise/tenon for the bottom, largest rail, a 1/2" for the upper and lower panel rails, and a 3/8" for the middle pillow blocker. Once I got the router and edge guide set up, it actually went fairly quickly with my daughter helping me keep the chips somewhat under control. Despite cutting all the pieces to the exact same length and using the exact same setup on the table saw (aside from blade height) to cut the tenons, somehow I ended up with a couple of gaps on a couple of the pieces where the shoulders did not fully sit tight to the post. Initially I thought it was because the tenons themselves were too long, but that proved to not be the case. What happened was that somehow one or more parts of the shoulders of various pieces ended up being cut too narrow, so the post bumped up against that and prevented the other sides from sitting flush.

I tried finessing things with a shoulder plane and got it a bit better, but eventually gave up because of the difficulty of test fitting, finessing, test fitting, et cetera. The pieces are really heavy! I think this bed might be a bit overbuilt.

Wood Floor Hardwood Gas Wood stain


Once I had the posts done and the tapers cut and smoothed there, I moved on to the panels. My wife and I spent a good amount of time deciding exactly how I should cut the walnut veneered plywood panel to best showcase its grain with the cherry. I think we came up with a good solution. I had to cut a groove in the top and bottom rails and stub tenons in the stiles to go between them. The stiles also needed grooves, and the panels cut to fit. That all went fairly smoothly.

Wood Hardwood Flooring Machine Gas


I decided to use those little rubber balls (Space Balls, Rockler calls them) in the groove to keep the panel centered yet allow it to move freely. I don't expect the plywood to move much, but better safe than sorry. Here's the stiles, rails, and panels dry fitted together. I love how it looks and can't wait to get finish on it. I think the wife will be shocked how good the walnut and cherry look with a clear finish on them.

Wood Wood stain Workbench Hardwood Plank


One decision left: gloss or semi-gloss finish? I plan to use Arm-R-Seal, which is my go-to for clear finishes. I had the idea to put on two or three gloss coats followed by a semi gloss to finish it up. Any thoughts on that?
Nice of you to include all the pictures, fun to watch. Gloss vs semi-gloss: Match the rest of the stuff in the bedroom.
 

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#13 ·
Side Rails, Center Rail, and Slats

After getting the headboard finished, I started on the side rails. I'd been thinking throughout the process about a way to get the mortises for the hardware into the end of the side rails, and I hadn't come up with anything. I was trying to avoid routing sideways, which seemed absurdly dangerous, difficult, and generally a Bad Idea with my heavy router. If I had one of those lighter compact plunge routers I might have considered it, but my Ridgid router weighs a heck of a lot and it would be impossible to control sideways.

I was sanding one day recently when I had an idea to get the board in a position where I could safely use a router right side up:

Tradesman Wood Window Construction worker Engineering


We trucked everything outside, clamped the board to the railing on our back porch stairs, and I routed the mortises that way. It was even secure enough where I could chisel out the small amount of extra material I had to remove to get the hardware to fit. I'm not sure I have ever chiseled end grain before, but I was expecting it to be a lot hard than it was. It ended up being fairly easy to finesse the fit of the hardware. Unlike the post hardware, I went for a very snug fit in the end grain since I knew the screws wouldn't bite well into it.

After getting the mortises done, I drilled holes and installed the hardware with 2 1/2" #8 square drive screws. It seems very solid. I even though about epoxying the hardware in place, but I figured that might be overkill and would prevent me from ever removing the hardware if I had to replace it for some reason.

With the hardware done, I milled and glued on the slat supports on the inside of each rail. They are just pieces of 5/4 material that is glued to the rail. I then started on the middle rail, which supports the slats in the middle. I'd intended to use a sort of a french cleat system to attach that rail. I glued and screwed this onto the headboard rail:

Table Rectangle Wood Floor Desk


I then glued a couple more blocks onto the side to prevent the middle rail from slipping out of the cleat. That all went fine.

Wood Rectangle Floor Wood stain Flooring


What didn't go well is me forgetting to dimension the middle rail properly. Instead of measuring from the assembled bed, I went from my printout from the rough plan, which incorrectly had the middle rail as the same length as the side rails (~80 inches). Instead, because the middle rail attaches to the footboard and headboard rails, it needed to be longer, so it didn't fit. All this after I'd cut and milled the rail, cut the cleat angles into the ends, and sanded it! The funny thing is that I went back to the sketchup file and the measurement from sketchup is nearly exactly what I ended up with on the actual bed, I'd just copied it down wrong when I made a spreadsheet of the parts I needed.

Fortunately, I had a spare piece of 8/4 maple lying around, so I cut that down and used it. I'm using maple for the slats, so I think it'll look fine.

Wood Flooring Gas Hardwood Grass


After finishing that, I jointed the edges of the slats (the maple I'd bought on my lumber-acquisition odyssey was already planed, though not as smooth as I wanted) and planed them with a light pass to smooth out rough spots. I cut the slats to 3 1/2 inches each, which I chose arbitrarily because it was close to half the width of the boards I had, leaving me a little room to joint and rip them. After all the milling of the 8/4 material for the posts, rails, and such, processing 4/4 material was a breeze.

As my wife said, "there's a bed in our basement!"

Wood Gas Automotive exterior Hardwood Flooring


Next is more sanding and finishing the parts, followed by applying finish. I decided to go with semi gloss Arm-R-Seal, which is my go-to finish. The wife definitely didn't want a high gloss finish on the bed, even with a semi gloss coat on top of it to dull it.
 

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#14 ·
Side Rails, Center Rail, and Slats

After getting the headboard finished, I started on the side rails. I'd been thinking throughout the process about a way to get the mortises for the hardware into the end of the side rails, and I hadn't come up with anything. I was trying to avoid routing sideways, which seemed absurdly dangerous, difficult, and generally a Bad Idea with my heavy router. If I had one of those lighter compact plunge routers I might have considered it, but my Ridgid router weighs a heck of a lot and it would be impossible to control sideways.

I was sanding one day recently when I had an idea to get the board in a position where I could safely use a router right side up:

Tradesman Wood Window Construction worker Engineering


We trucked everything outside, clamped the board to the railing on our back porch stairs, and I routed the mortises that way. It was even secure enough where I could chisel out the small amount of extra material I had to remove to get the hardware to fit. I'm not sure I have ever chiseled end grain before, but I was expecting it to be a lot hard than it was. It ended up being fairly easy to finesse the fit of the hardware. Unlike the post hardware, I went for a very snug fit in the end grain since I knew the screws wouldn't bite well into it.

After getting the mortises done, I drilled holes and installed the hardware with 2 1/2" #8 square drive screws. It seems very solid. I even though about epoxying the hardware in place, but I figured that might be overkill and would prevent me from ever removing the hardware if I had to replace it for some reason.

With the hardware done, I milled and glued on the slat supports on the inside of each rail. They are just pieces of 5/4 material that is glued to the rail. I then started on the middle rail, which supports the slats in the middle. I'd intended to use a sort of a french cleat system to attach that rail. I glued and screwed this onto the headboard rail:

Table Rectangle Wood Floor Desk


I then glued a couple more blocks onto the side to prevent the middle rail from slipping out of the cleat. That all went fine.

Wood Rectangle Floor Wood stain Flooring


What didn't go well is me forgetting to dimension the middle rail properly. Instead of measuring from the assembled bed, I went from my printout from the rough plan, which incorrectly had the middle rail as the same length as the side rails (~80 inches). Instead, because the middle rail attaches to the footboard and headboard rails, it needed to be longer, so it didn't fit. All this after I'd cut and milled the rail, cut the cleat angles into the ends, and sanded it! The funny thing is that I went back to the sketchup file and the measurement from sketchup is nearly exactly what I ended up with on the actual bed, I'd just copied it down wrong when I made a spreadsheet of the parts I needed.

Fortunately, I had a spare piece of 8/4 maple lying around, so I cut that down and used it. I'm using maple for the slats, so I think it'll look fine.

Wood Flooring Gas Hardwood Grass


After finishing that, I jointed the edges of the slats (the maple I'd bought on my lumber-acquisition odyssey was already planed, though not as smooth as I wanted) and planed them with a light pass to smooth out rough spots. I cut the slats to 3 1/2 inches each, which I chose arbitrarily because it was close to half the width of the boards I had, leaving me a little room to joint and rip them. After all the milling of the 8/4 material for the posts, rails, and such, processing 4/4 material was a breeze.

As my wife said, "there's a bed in our basement!"

Wood Gas Automotive exterior Hardwood Flooring


Next is more sanding and finishing the parts, followed by applying finish. I decided to go with semi gloss Arm-R-Seal, which is my go-to finish. The wife definitely didn't want a high gloss finish on the bed, even with a semi gloss coat on top of it to dull it.
Very nice work. I like the "French cleat" trick on the center rail.

How thick are your side rails?
 

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#20 ·
Finished the Bed and Lessons Learned

I actually finished the bed last June/July, but forgot to take final pictures of it for a while, then forgot to write up the blog post capping off the project as well. Here's the bed now (pardon the mess).



On the whole, I'm very happy with it. The sanding and finishing of the parts went fine. I masked off the joinery and finished the parts separately, which was great. I'd never done that before but I'm definitely doing that every time I have a project of any substantial size.

Trying to get finish on assembled pieces takes a lot longer and is much harder. Working on a flat, clean surface was way, way better. The real problem was that I ran out of flat surfaces in my workshop to put pieces on!

I had the workbench filled up, set up a folding full size table in the laundry area, and still had to put cardboard down on the table saw to use that as well. I was careful to cover the surface with two layers of cardboard and such.



I like the design of the headboard quite a bit. The walnut and cherry look great together.







The joinery on the headboard is good, but it squeaks a bit more than I'd like.



I like the minimalist footboard rail and post design. I've never liked beds with footboards that extend up past the mattress, so a design like this was a must.







I learned a ton from this project, and feel like I could avoid a few mistakes were I to do it again. I'm not sure if I'd change the design at all, but I'd definitely smooth out some of the mistakes I made along the way. All in all, a very successful project. I'm happy to hear feedback on the design choices.
 

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#21 ·
Finished the Bed and Lessons Learned

I actually finished the bed last June/July, but forgot to take final pictures of it for a while, then forgot to write up the blog post capping off the project as well. Here's the bed now (pardon the mess).

Furniture Cabinetry Building Property Chest of drawers


On the whole, I'm very happy with it. The sanding and finishing of the parts went fine. I masked off the joinery and finished the parts separately, which was great. I'd never done that before but I'm definitely doing that every time I have a project of any substantial size.

Trying to get finish on assembled pieces takes a lot longer and is much harder. Working on a flat, clean surface was way, way better. The real problem was that I ran out of flat surfaces in my workshop to put pieces on!

I had the workbench filled up, set up a folding full size table in the laundry area, and still had to put cardboard down on the table saw to use that as well. I was careful to cover the surface with two layers of cardboard and such.

Furniture Comfort Wood Rectangle Chair


I like the design of the headboard quite a bit. The walnut and cherry look great together.

Wood Rectangle Wood stain Hardwood Plank


Wood Table Flooring Floor Wood stain


Furniture Rectangle Wood Shelf Wood stain


The joinery on the headboard is good, but it squeaks a bit more than I'd like.

Furniture Comfort Wood Rectangle Flooring


I like the minimalist footboard rail and post design. I've never liked beds with footboards that extend up past the mattress, so a design like this was a must.

Wood Rectangle Flooring Wood stain Floor


Wood Rectangle Comfort Flooring Floor


Brown Wood Sleeve Flooring Wood stain


I learned a ton from this project, and feel like I could avoid a few mistakes were I to do it again. I'm not sure if I'd change the design at all, but I'd definitely smooth out some of the mistakes I made along the way. All in all, a very successful project. I'm happy to hear feedback on the design choices.
That's a nice design, and I agree with you concerning the footboard rail.

A very lovely bed.
 

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