Please help me with this mortise

[JoeyGee]

I am making a bed--Norm's Trundle Bed. This is the second one for me--the first went to my son when he was 2, and now my daughter is 2, and needs a bed. Anyway, everything is complete, but I am now mortising for the hardware. I need to make a mortise about 5" tall, 3/4" wide and 1/8" deep in the ends of the bed, which are 73" long. On the previous bed, I chiseled them out--not very easy in end grain. I will most likely do it this way again, unless I hear a better idea.

I just am not comfortable enough working with a router horizontally. I thought about standing the rails up, attached firmly to a ladder and routing from the ladder, but that just sounds unsafe.

Any ideas before I neanderthal it?

[Wood_workur]

Could you use a forsner bit to remove the bulk of the material, and then chisel the remainder?

[drumpriest]

Only 1/8" deep? I'd probably clamp the thing in a vise, and get out my plunge router w/ spiral cutter.

[scmhogg]

Joey

If you have one, you might be more comfortable working horizontally with a laminate trimmer. I have the Ryobi, and I find I use it a lot instead of one of my hand held routers. With four to do, it might be worth your while to make jig that would slide over the end of rails with a board on the end that would be your template and additional support for the router/trimmer.

I also use a starter set of spiral bits from MCLS. They are solid carbide and wickedly sharp.

Steve

[drumpriest]

Holbren also has solid carbide cutters, and is very affordable, he's a member of this forum.

[cabinetman]

You may be able to use a spacer and a slot cutter in your router and hog out most of it, and finish with a sharp chisel. Or, in some cases for that type of machining, use dowels or a spline. Creative woodworking has no limits.



"I'M NEVER WRONG - BUT I'M NOT ALWAYS RIGHT"

[JimD]

I have two beds with the style of fastener I think your are talking about. It has hook pieces that go on the rails and pieces with slots in it that go on the headboard and footboard. The ones I used were 5 inches long and 5/8 wide.

What I did is to make a small jig for the router (PC 690 - a mid sized router but you could use a smaller router, especially for the 1/8 deep cut). When cutting the rails I put them in a bench vise at an angle so it was not purely horizontal (one end is on the floor, the other end up in the air at a convenient height). I find it pretty easy to control a PC690 even using it one handed for shallow cuts when necessary. With the rail in a bench vise you can keep two hands on the router however. The jig is just a couple of pieces of scrap softwood. Rip a piece on the BT3100 that is wider than the hardware by the distance between the router bit you will use and the template guide understanding that this distance needs to be on both sides of the opening. For example, I typically would use a 5/8 template guide and a 1/2 inch bit. That means that the opening in the jig has to be 1/8 bigger in width and length than the hardware - 3/4 by 5 1/8. You have to be 1/16 larger than the hardware all the way around because the bit is 1/16 inside the edge of the template guide all the way around. Hope this makes sense.

I rip a piece 3/4 wide for this example plus about 1/32 or a bit less. I have found this hardware to not be real precisely sized. Spit the rest of the board in the middle and then put the 3/4 piece into the center. You have to cut it in length and only put it on the ends to make a precise square sided hole in the center of the board. I then screw a guide at right angles to the piece with the square hole in it on the underside to allow me to clamp to the rail and the headboard/footboard. I have to move this edge guide to a different spot to switch from rail to headboard but I use the same piece with the square sided hole. In addition, you will have to make little recesses for the rivet on the back side of the piece on the rails - I chisel that - and deeper slots for the hooks to come through on the head board and footboard. I do those with a spiral router bit (1/4 inch) and an edge guide. You could also make another jig.

You do not need a spiral router bit for any of these cuts. They are nicer but for the little 1/8 recess it makes little difference.

Jim