Sunday, December 7, 2014

California King Size Walnut Bed, Part 4

I assembled the bed in the room before I finished it.

First I clamped everything together:


I use these hardwood squares I made long ago that are super useful for this type of clamping:


These are the holes for the bolts that connect on the other side with barrel nuts.  I used a 3/4 inch forstner bit to make room for the nut head:


I cut the plugs with a plug cutter on the drill press:


And I cut them flush with a flush trim saw.



I installed the support boards which are made out of 2x6 lumber


These are joined with metal squares:

The pieces separating each board are made with plywood and glued to the rail:


This is how it all looked put together before finish:


I sanded everything with the orbital sander at 80, 150 and 220 grit, then used a finish of 2 parts tung oil, 1 part polyurethane and 1 part mineral spirits.  I gave it 3 coats in total and used steel wool in between.


And this is the finished bed:




California King Size Walnut Bed, Part 3

To make the head board, I started by joining the boards using biscuits.



I wiped most of the glue squeeze out with wood dust right away, then once dried I went over with a chisel and a hand plane to remove the rest.


I used the orbital sander with 80 and 150 grit to finish the surface.


Then I trimmed the ends to the final length with the jig saw first...


...and finally with a router to leave a perfect finish.


I always make lots of adjustments to the initial plans throughout the build...


To cut the miters for the head board frame, I used the miter saw.  To get a bit more accuracy I used a piece of sacrificial plywood as the base so it'd show me the cut line.  Then I sneaked to the cut line a little at a time.


I don't trust the guides on the saw, so I made a few test cuts on scrap wood to make sure I got a perfectly square angle:


The frame is also joined with biscuits.


A handy trick to clamp very long boards is to connect two long clamps:


This is how the back of the head board looked like once done:


If there're any small gaps in the corners I finish them with a mix of super fine sand dust and glue:



The side boards were a lot easier to make, here's a gluing the rail to it, which also has a bunch of drywall screws:


The legs are very simple also, first I cut them to width:


Then to length on my sled:


and finally gave them a sanding:


These are also glued with biscuits.  Here's using Matthias Wandel's trick to remove squeeze out with wood dust: