Glueing up and milling the legs
Hello friends, I invite you to join me on my newest adventure. I'm building some bunk beds for the kids. I contemplating buying them but after going to pottery barn kids and seeing pine bunk beds for $1,400 I talked the ol' lady into letting me make them. I mean they even had planner tear out in them and everything to give them that rustic look. I can do better than that!
So here is the plan:
The wood is HD 2×6's. I bought some plans online just to validate what I was planning on doing. All the wood in these plans calls for 1.5"X5.5" lumber which is perfect for what you can get at HD. Besides the leg glue ups it should all just be smoothing and joinery.
So I bought a lot of the wood on Father's day (not enough) and it's been mellowing out in the shop since then.
So about 3 days ago I started to get to work. Its been sweet because the wife has given me some free time during the day to get it done. Usually I only work when the kids are in bed but my 5 yr old has been sleeping on his new mattress on the floor until I get this done.
So far progress has been pretty good
After cross cutting the boards on the chop saw I put a straight edge on each board.
I stopped doing this after remembering that it's not really necessary on the band saw, that saved me a step.
So I just ripped them to rough width on the BS.
After face jointing with the #5 1/2 I glued them up.
Super Dave spike dog in action here! This came in so handy for this operation.
Boards that didnt sit flat on my bench were actually rocking and pushing my brass dogs down into the bench so the spike dog was the answer.
Thanks Dave!
Because I don't have a huge number of clamps I glued the legs up two at a time. This let me glue up 4 legs a day so it took me two days.
Once out of the clamps I squared up two adjacent sides in preparation for running them through the planner.
Squigglies mark the square faces.
The band saw got them close to final dimension. Thanks to Michael Fortunes advise on FWW I've got my band saw working pretty well so it only took a couple of passes through the planner to get them to final dimension.
After a couple of days of this the shavings are starting to get out of control! LOL
So it's been 3 or so days of fun work and I now I bask in the glow of the perfectly square pine legs.
The fruits of my labor are sweet! This is actually pretty attractive wood after its been planed. I'm not sure if that comes across in the pictures.
I'll tell you guys, I've been battling with myself for at least a year about getting a power jointer but I just cant pull the trigger. I kind of enjoy the jointing process, I'm getting faster at it, and it probably only added a day to this big project. I think I'm going to keep holding out. I mean who doesn't need a little more exercise? I know I do.
Thanks for following along and for your support. The rest of the project should be downhill from here (knock on wood)
Hopefully this inspires others to tackle this project.
Questions and comments are welcome.
Mauricio
Hello friends, I invite you to join me on my newest adventure. I'm building some bunk beds for the kids. I contemplating buying them but after going to pottery barn kids and seeing pine bunk beds for $1,400 I talked the ol' lady into letting me make them. I mean they even had planner tear out in them and everything to give them that rustic look. I can do better than that!
So here is the plan:
The wood is HD 2×6's. I bought some plans online just to validate what I was planning on doing. All the wood in these plans calls for 1.5"X5.5" lumber which is perfect for what you can get at HD. Besides the leg glue ups it should all just be smoothing and joinery.
So I bought a lot of the wood on Father's day (not enough) and it's been mellowing out in the shop since then.
So about 3 days ago I started to get to work. Its been sweet because the wife has given me some free time during the day to get it done. Usually I only work when the kids are in bed but my 5 yr old has been sleeping on his new mattress on the floor until I get this done.
So far progress has been pretty good
After cross cutting the boards on the chop saw I put a straight edge on each board.
I stopped doing this after remembering that it's not really necessary on the band saw, that saved me a step.
So I just ripped them to rough width on the BS.
After face jointing with the #5 1/2 I glued them up.
Super Dave spike dog in action here! This came in so handy for this operation.
Boards that didnt sit flat on my bench were actually rocking and pushing my brass dogs down into the bench so the spike dog was the answer.
Thanks Dave!
Because I don't have a huge number of clamps I glued the legs up two at a time. This let me glue up 4 legs a day so it took me two days.
Once out of the clamps I squared up two adjacent sides in preparation for running them through the planner.
Squigglies mark the square faces.
The band saw got them close to final dimension. Thanks to Michael Fortunes advise on FWW I've got my band saw working pretty well so it only took a couple of passes through the planner to get them to final dimension.
After a couple of days of this the shavings are starting to get out of control! LOL
So it's been 3 or so days of fun work and I now I bask in the glow of the perfectly square pine legs.
The fruits of my labor are sweet! This is actually pretty attractive wood after its been planed. I'm not sure if that comes across in the pictures.
I'll tell you guys, I've been battling with myself for at least a year about getting a power jointer but I just cant pull the trigger. I kind of enjoy the jointing process, I'm getting faster at it, and it probably only added a day to this big project. I think I'm going to keep holding out. I mean who doesn't need a little more exercise? I know I do.
Thanks for following along and for your support. The rest of the project should be downhill from here (knock on wood)
Hopefully this inspires others to tackle this project.
Questions and comments are welcome.
Mauricio