Thread: Bed time!

Either can be used. Works fine with poly. Not necessary with oil and wax. The wax self lubricates.

Originally Posted by markharrison

I suggest you reinforce the short grain in the ends of the rails with a dowel. They're likely to snap off at some point without reinforcement.

Wise words indeed.

I thought I'd be clever and get a coat of finish on last weekend then glue in the dowels, so cleanup would be nice and easy. I thought it would help if I put the boards out on the back porch (it didn't help) where there is a bit more airflow.

When bringing the boards in, I knocked one edge against a pillar and pop - I really am my own worst enemy.

broken bit.jpg

Good times, at least it was a clean break so a bit of poly glue, two clamps and it's almost as good as new. I won't tell anyone if you don't tell anyone. In my defense, having a coat of finish on did make clean up as simple as peeling the polyurethane foam off.

So while that's drying, let's make the dowels. Made up some dowel blanks from maple cut offs.

dowel blanks.jpg

The blanks are about 12mm square, I probably should have gone a little slimmer to make the 10mm dowels.


dowel cutter.jpg

And this is the dowel cutter from Banggood. It's pretty decently made, all aluminium and uses a carbide insert as the cutting blade.

So my first attempts on the left were not great. But they got better! The trick seems to be max speed on the drill and a very slow feed rate. I ran out of maple cut offs due to the learning curve so the right most are QLD blackwood.

dowels.jpg

As for the dowel sizing, just a hair under 10mm. Glue takes up the space but I need to at some point check the diameters of the dowel cutter with calipers. It could also be my wonky method, so a little more practice and investigation before I give it a glowing review.

And the dowels glued in. Can you see the header board that I drilled the dowels on the wrong edge? I need to keep a tally of how many mistakes I can make on a pretty straight forward project.

drying.jpg

Hopefully the Osmo will be dry by tomorrow so I can put on the slat holders and slats. Our Brisbane weather has been ridiculous this whole week, near 40deg and enough humidity you can taste the water in the air. I'm using Osmo extra thin clear, normally is ready for recoating within 24 hours. With our current weather it is taking 48 hours+ per coat to dry.

As for the slats, they'll just be 90x35mm pine studs with the ridges planed. I don't think it needs a center beam and center legs as the span is under 1.2m but happy to take advice on this.

I got one of those dowel makers a few months ago and also found that speed of rotation is the key. Just so happens the blades are the same as my thicknesser uses so I have plenty spares. Dont think a bit of fuzz will matter where the dowel will not be seen and will hold glue better as well.
Regards
John

The first order of business was to take down a lot of timber to find the 90x35 pine studs that I'd bought a couple of years ago... a sweaty hour later they were located, timber restacked, and the studs cross cut to length. A bit of milling on the jointer and thicknesser and soon enough, we have a lovely pile of milled pine for the slats. They're about 32mm thick still, so if the little one manages to break these slats, I'll give him a medal. It likely won't be for lack of trying though.

slats.jpg

Next order of business were the slat holders. I had initially planned to just screw the slats into the slat holders but some reading led me to think this is isn't done to every slat since the timber needs to flex and will thus work against a screw or nail. I don't know how much that would apply to slats of this thickness, but it wouldn't be that onerous to cut recesses for the slats to sit in. First thought was gang the slat holders together and route the recesses out with a power router. Holders were clamped together and the slat positions marked together to ensure that all of the slats lined up correctly.

slat holders clamped.jpg

I did one before deciding I really didn't want to use the router. So I took them apart and got the crosscut saw out to make relief cuts.

sawn kerfs.jpg

Then a bit of whacking to knock out the sawn bits. Someone will have to tell me what these should be called. Dados? Recesses?

dado knocked out.jpg

Before going any further, the thickness of the slat is marked using an offcut and knife nick, then extended using a square.

slat width marking.jpg

This method always gives a well fitting joint. Bit of chisel work to get close to the depth line as well. And then out comes the hand router to clean up the bottom of the dado/recess.

routing out waste.jpg

Then the edges pared down at the knife lines with a chisel.

At this point I kind of realized I didn't need perfect bottoms to these dados. So I used the alternative method of chopping the waste out. Cross cut the limits of the dado/recess, set the chisel half way in the waste, bevel up, handle lowered a little and pop the top off. Most of the dados were roughed out with two to three chops like this. Much faster than the saw method, just have to be careful if the grain is diving and pops out a chunk of wood below the depth line.

waste chopped.jpg

To limit the risk of popping out unintended timber, I made one additional cut in the center to limit how much timber came off with each chop. A little extra work but much less risky in the long run.

slat half way cuts.jpg

And a test fit, happy to say, 23 of the 26 dados were perfect. Slat goes in with a light tap and doesn't come out without a tap on the back.

slat fit test.jpg
The three that were just ok were sawn to the knife lines for practice. Definitely need a bit more practice with the saws.

And a little while later, the dados/recesses are done (ok, it was like 2 hours). I was, of course quite pleased with the progress.

slat holder complete.jpg

The next step was to fit the slat holders to the bed side boards. I almost caught myself out here. The slat holders need to be aligned so the slats aren't skewed and they also need to be the same height. I clamped the slat holder to the side board with a clamp at each end. So the ends were the correct height but there was a slight bow in the 2m long slat holder and I almost screwed in the center about 5mm too low... More novice errors! But the error was caught and fixed and apart from a lot of drilling, countersinking, and driving screws, this part was simple. And do the slat recesses line up?

slat alignment.jpg

Why yes, yes they do. And that pretty much does it for the frame.

completed frame.jpg

In the clients room. Now the only issue was once I put the mattress on. It's one of those types that has like a topper built into it. I took my measurements from a mattress that didn't have said topper at about 60mm thickness. So the mattress looks a little high. Not the end of the world as it can be remedied by moving the slat holders down, half an hours work? But that's another weekend.

"Have I mentioned just how much I like using hand tools on Qld Maple?"

I endorse this statement - if only we had plantations of this instead of Radiata....

Jolly good work Alkahestic! Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
I also have a delayed bed build project that I'm restarting today. Learned a lot from your thread, and will steal a couple of ideas.

Originally Posted by AnthonySeiver

"Have I mentioned just how much I like using hand tools on Qld Maple?"

I endorse this statement - if only we had plantations of this instead of Radiata....

If only! Radiata has it's place but the more I read on green deserts and just how terribly a lot of our once forested land has been (mis)managed, the more depressing it gets.

Originally Posted by rogerwilco

Jolly good work Alkahestic! Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
I also have a delayed bed build project that I'm restarting today. Learned a lot from your thread, and will steal a couple of ideas.

What, isn't it finished already!? The mattress is on and you can sleep on it now Yes... I'll get the head board eventually. Please steal away, happy if my mishaps can help someone else avoid them!

In the meantime, I need to chop the legs down and maybe lower the rails a bit, the bed is standard height at the moment and not the lower height I'd like. I left some extra length on the legs since it's easy enough to chop them after the fact and Veritas haven't released their board stretchers yet. Hopefully will have an hour tomorrow to make some noise and saw dust.