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Well my (first) quarantine project has officially been completed. Well, it wasn't entirely done during the quarantine, but with going to 3 or 4 lumber yards to find ambrosia maple thick enough to book match into 1/2" panels I didn't really get into this one too much until mid-march. This was my first time designing in sketchup. I did a set of side tables and my wife was having trouble visualizing them when I showed her 2D cad drawings (Usually I'll do CAD or a sketch on graph paper when I design). There was a definite learning curve to sketchup, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty neat and made seeing the finished product a whole lot easier. The whole thing was built with slightly oversize tenons and then finished. Tenons were fit using chisels and a block plane as I assembled. I think I'll be buying a shoulder plane to make that job easier next time. Mortises in the long pieces are 3/4" deep and the ones in the leg are 2" deep - probably overkill but I have a habit of having big mortises when I build beds. It was amazing how fast this project went from a pile of wood pieces with mortises and tenons cut, to finished, to assembled. It seemed like 90% of this was milling and ripping pieces to rough size and then a week later it was done.
To support the mattress I used a steel H frame that spans side to side and has 3 legs down the middle of the bed. On top of that is a wood/steel "box spring" type device that has the wooden slats to support the memory foam. I cut all the slats for the last bed I built, and decided I'd rather just buy something already done for this one. That was definitely worth it. Also opening up one of those boxed up memory foam mattresses is really cool.
Some lessons learned from this
To support the mattress I used a steel H frame that spans side to side and has 3 legs down the middle of the bed. On top of that is a wood/steel "box spring" type device that has the wooden slats to support the memory foam. I cut all the slats for the last bed I built, and decided I'd rather just buy something already done for this one. That was definitely worth it. Also opening up one of those boxed up memory foam mattresses is really cool.
Some lessons learned from this
- Breaking the edges on all the corners before finishing really helped hide any misalignment when the parts were glued up. Even with mortises and tenons cut so that they were centered (referenced off both sides) some pieces ended up with a little twist or a little offset. I'm also glad that I made sure the finish wrapped way around that broken edge so that there wouldn't be any visible gaps where the joints were. Finishing it when I was done might have let me get those joints tighter, but I see it as a stylist change, kinda like a bead at the joint.
- Hiding a misplaced mortise isn't too hard, especially if you cut a 2 degree taper on the end grain of the filler piece. Add glue and drive it home with a mallet. You can see one on the headboard only because I couldn't color match that.
- Last time I built a bed it was suggested to make the frame a little oversize to make putting sheets on the mattress easy. On this one, its exact size (And I bought the box sporing before starting to build it to make sure of that) and the mattress is a mere .5" below the top of the side rails. Still super easy and I think the fit looks better than an oversized frame.
- I put a wooden riser block in my bandsaw to get enough resaw capacity for these panels. It took everything that saw has to make that cut, but it cut a whole lot better since I got the wheels aligned when I put the block in. I now understand why people love the bandsaw more than I used to, they cut amazingly when they're aligned right. I went from a ton of drift to 0 drift.
- When I glued up the headboard/footboard I used a freshly joined board to keep the shoulders aligned on the big tenons. They were as aligned as I could get them. I think the legs moved a bit since they were built first and there were some small (like 1/32" or so) gaps at the tenons. No big deal, not super noticeable, but next time I think I'll put more thought into what gets milled first.. I think if I built the legs last they would have been tighter joints. At the very least, I could have planned to do a final pass through the jointer before assembly.
- Next time I'll just buy some 8' pipes and make long pipe clamps instead of piggybacking clamps like I did. That'll also probably help tighten those joints up.
- I'm not completely sold on the height of the headboard. Part of me wishes it was 4" or so shorter. I should have spent more time with mockups before deciding on this height. My next project is a kitchen table and chairs, and my wife and I have already done tons of mockups using the box from the mattress, and setting different sized tables and trying to see what it'll look like in the house. Visualizing the sizes in relation to the room can be hard, I knew how much bigger this california king was compared to the queen we had, but I didn't really know how much bigger it would seem in the room. When I put the frame together the first time, the first thing I thought was "Oh crap, what did I do"
Loring in Katy, TX USA
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