My neighbor’s gate will be to the left of this one.

At 40” it will be about 3” wider than mine but a little shorter. They should balance out okay since her side is a little higher. It will also be 2” thick like the first gate on the other side of my house. I made the second gate 1 1/2” and didn’t like it as much. The 2” takes a little more work on the front end laminating and milling but it is no harder after that.

This time around I also wanted to experiment with different colors and techniques so I cut up some sample tiles. And talk about cool tools, this sheet metal cutter is great.

I got the chemicals from The Science Company in Denver and more or less (tried to) followed their patina recipies. Combining dry and liquid measures is not my thing and I have much to learn.

I printed labels with the recipe number, formula, and color so I could keep track.

And here’s yours truly in action with some samples.

In the next installment I’ll do the headboard panel.

I’m looking forward to meeting all the Sacramento/NorCal Lumberjocks at the Woodworking Show in a couple weeks.

Just like the headboard, the footboard gets 3/8” holes to house the metal spacers. The middle hole or channel for the connector shaft having been already cut. I put some tape on the three middle holes of the jig as a reminder to just cut the top and bottom. Again, it is a pretty easy matter to line up the jig. Just find the center of the stock then slide the jig so it lines up on the cross line. A couple of small tips. One is to use the same side of the jig to register to the same side of the part being drilled. In this case the fixed side of the jig is on the outside of the piece. Another advantage of this is if the tray does slide it will likely slide to the inside and make the error on the hidden side and not on the good side. A little lesson I learned the hard way and covered in Part 9: Mortise Messup.

The side rails require 1/4” holes for the pins so all I had to do was a quick bit change. Or in this case switch routers. Once again you can see the jig can be used safely on long rails which usually require an integral tenon because they are so long.

I went ahead and drilled three holes in the side rails to better line up the router to cut the channel. Then I set up the drill press with a 1 1/2” forstner bit and set the depth so it wouldn’t drill through the outside of the rail.

The pins are made out of 1/4” steel rod I bought at Home Depot and cut using a Rotozip. I then chucked each pin into a drill and deburred and rounded one end on the disk sander.

And the proof is in the fit. Enough of this stuff. Time to do an initial assembly! You all come back now, ya hear?

The makers of the jig have a number of different interchangeable templates that register off two small pins in the jig. One of these is a dowling template with five holes, one being on center. I read the instruction manual and didn’t see any rules against not using all five so I figured it would be okay.

Since the posts each require three 3/8” diameter holes (the middle hole for the connector, the other two for metal spacers) I decided to drill the posts first then change bits. The picture shows the new version of the jig which can accomodate a little wider piece than the first, but still not wide enough for the 3 1/2” wide posts. No worries though, I made up a pommel(?) for the jig to straddle and clamped it to the post.

All you have to do is center the sliding part of the jig on the width of the piece and lock it down. Then you line up the jig itself on the centerline or crossline and tighten the clamp. A 5/8” guide bushing is required for the router and as you can see I like to use the Milescraft Turnlock System. My hands are as big as catcher’s mits and I’m not getting any younger so the Turnlock system is a very easy way to attach guide bushings, but I digress.

After setting up the jig I drilled the middle hole by plunging the router as deep as the bit would go. For the top and bottom holes I grounded the bit on the surface then set the depth guage using one of the 1” metal spacers as a guide then plunged those holes.

I just noticed on the picture above it looks like the holes do not line up with the original marks I had made. This is because I used the jig itself the locate the upper and lower holes. Again all I really had to do was locate the center or crossline and let the template take care of itself.

I glued spacers into the top and bottom holes and later routed and chisled a mortise on the back to seat the connector.

You can see here that it is not a bad fit. Next entry I’ll do the side rails and footboard.

This next shot is a little out of order but I used various rulers, squares, and templates to line up the holes. As it turned out all I needed was to find the centerline of the middle hole, the hole that lines up the connector. The other two holes are defined by the jig.

Each of the four joints has three matching holes. The center hole is for the connector. The top and bottom holes are for the pins. I used 1/4” steel rod and 1” long metal spacers. The ID of the spacers is slightly larger than 1/4”, very slight. And the OD of the spacers is just under 3/8” so this means I could drill three 3/8” diameter holes on the headboard posts, three 1/4” holes on each end of the two side rails, and two 1/4” holes on the footboard. The footboard only needed two because I had already cut the channel for the connector bolt. I made a 3/8” middle hole in the headboard post to give the 1/4” diameter connector some wiggle room on that side of the joint.

Like I said in the previous blog, it turned out to be much easier than you would expect and due to the length of this entry I’ll go through that ‘drill’ in the next blog.

The idea is to be able to easily break the bed down into its component parts and be able to put it back together so it is solid and stable. I think these first two pictures nicely sum up the challenge.

The top photo is the footboard to side rail. The second photo is the side rail to the headboard post. You can see metal sleeves in both the footboard and headboard parts. The pins are 1/4” and will be glued in to each side rail. The metal sleeves (spacers) are glued in to the head/footboard. The purpose of the metal sleeves is to help reduce wear and tear on the wood. Next time I think I’ll put the sleeves in both parts.

The idea is to cut matching holes in the two conecting parts that are the same distance from the top and the exact same distance apart on center. Here’s a shot of the original idea in Sketchup.

And here are a couple of shots of the results. The joints are incredibly strong and fit together easily . Next time I will break down the process of this break down joint.

It all started when I glued the inner frame without cutting the mortises on the outside rails.

While this is not optimal it is still not tragic. While I am a big fan of the Mortise Pal jig and you can see its versatility in this shot, it is still not foolproof. In this case me being the fool.

The jig rides like a saddle with one fence fixed and the other adjusts in and out to the thickness of the stock. The router has a guide bushing which rides in a plastic template which is affixed to an adjustable tray that locks in place. Sometimes it doesn’t.

It isn’t the fault of the jig. With all the mortises I was cutting it is easy for the small lever to loosen due to vibration. And it is easy to push the router bushing against the template with to much force. In any event the tray slipped and the mortise blew out the good side of the frame.

I used a straight bit and guide on the router to cut a rabbet the length of the frame (long grain) and wide enough to remove the damage. I milled up some maple from the cut off bin and beveled one edge on the joiner to get as tight a fit as possible. After a glue and a bunch of clamps I flush trimmed the patch to match the frame and used a small plane, scraper, and sander to smooth it all out. Then I recut the mortises making d—- sure to lock everything down.

And here’s the result.

Then I mounted the parts of the outside arch to mark the center and endlines and make sure everything is lined up.

After cutting the bottom (straight) piece to length I butt it up against the sawblade and clamp it to the sled.

I then placed the arch on the straight piece to line up the outside marks, but as you can see it is too long to rest against it on the end marks so trimmed I some of the excess with a jigsaw leaving a couple inches overhang.

I clamped the arch to the sled and to the straight piece and made the cut.

Then while leaving the straight piece clamped in place I rotated the arched piece and lined up the cut end with the end of the straight rail.

I re-clamped the arch to the sled and rail and made the other (parallel) cut. Then I mounted both pieces on the inner frame to check for accuracy. Works like a charm. Safe and accurate.