Grand daughters bed

Bob Gibson

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11,472
Location
Merrimack, New Hampshire
I'm making a "big girl bed" for my granddaughter Abby. Its going to be kind of a mission style design twin bed.

I brought a box of Dunkin's best to the guy I buy some of my wood from and he let me walk around his warehouse to pick out some wood. I was going to use all oak but I found a pile of cherry. I was going to glue up 3 pieces to make the posts but then I found 2 10' lengths of 3x5 butternut. Anyway he gave me everything for half price. $70.00. I've never worked with either wood before.

Questions:
I'm thinking of making the headboard and footboard from the cherry and making the posts from the butternut. Will this look stupid?

I need about 22pcs 2" x3/8" x 16" for the slats on the hb and fb. I dont want to waste all the 4/4 cherry by planing it down. I was thinking of cutting the slats to the 2" thickness and then trying to resaw them on my bandsaw. I just have the Shopsmith band saw and the widest blade I have is 3/8". Anyone got any better ideas.

I would also appreciate any finishing ideas.

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I got to thinking about it and I felt having the 2 different wood species on the bed may not look right. So I went back to the wood guy today and bought enough butternut for the rails and foot and head board. I'll save the cherry for something else thats special.

I had time today to make the posts and plane down the long boards. The 3x5 post stock was somewhat twisted in spots and it was a bear to get it all straight. The good news is I have enough cutoffs to make about a billion pens. (sorry Larry):D. Or maybe a cute little bowl for Frank :D.

Figured out how to make the slats as well.

I could still use some suggestions for finishes folks. :(

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well bob i have some butternut and have seen some of it done up in furniture from a long time back its kinda yellowish when finished clear with an oil base product,, the wood works alot like walnut. soft stuff and take care to not mar your final sanded faces.. i mean a wood chip with some weight on it will mar the surface. can be resanded but just look out for it.. the wood is sometimes called poor mans walnut because the grain structure is very similiar.. my choice would be natural but it does stain well..
 
I didn't get anything done this weekend. I woke up Saturday AM with a infected tooth and my noon my face was swollen up like a grapefruit. The Dentist called in a prescription for an antibiotic and pain killers so I spent the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday in a fog.
My daughter took this picture of me and my granddaughter Abby at my other daughters wedding rehearsal and wants me to laminate or fix it permanently somehow to the back of the headboard so my granddaughter will see it when I'm long gone.
I have no clue as to how to do it.:dunno:

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Hey Bob, dentures will cure those toothaches!!! :thumb::thumb::thumb:

I don't know, the two species of wood, the butternut being the posts could also have been any vertical styles also sandwiched between the cherry, might have been quite amazing!!!
 
I had the picture laminated today. At the craft store I found a clear rigid plastic envelope just about the same size as the picture. I think that I will route out a notch in the back of the headboard big enough to fit the envelope just so it's flush and glue it in.
Thanks for the ideas.:)
 
Well I finally found some of the pictures that the computer spirits decided to send into hide and seek on my hard drive.

I had to set the bed up in my living room to make sure it fit together properly before I brought it to my grand daughters house because of the lack of floor space in my shop.

Just a mish mosh of shots. I had to make the mortises for the slats o the head and tail board out of spacers because even with the extension on my mortise machine it wasn't quite tall enough. They came out real well I think.
The butternut was great to work with. Besides some great looking grain it machined and finished beautifully Thanks to Don's recommendation It was finished with BLO and 4 coats of wipe on poly.
Only thing left to do is to put the picture on the back side of the head board. :)

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Thanks for the nice comments. Very much appreciated :)

I used a locking no mortise bed rail assembly from Rockler (#53724). I looked at all their products and read all the comments and reviews people posted about them. I bought another style initially but I was concerned that my son in law wouldn't be able to set the bed up properly (another story :() They work well and were easy to install but I think that if I had mortised them in it would of looked better and would be potentially stronger. Down the road I will probably turn this into a bunk bed. I'll mortise them in at that time probably.
 
Hi Bob

The bed really looks great, sure she will enjoy it.:thumb:

One thing has me puzzled is your comment on spacers. Sorry for dumb question but in your pictures you show the mortises as well as the spacers so i aint following where you used the spacers. I dont own a mortiser and cant quiet follow where the issue was with the making of the mortises in the tail and headboard. :dunno:

They certainly dont seem to appear in the pictures.
 
Sorry for the confusion Rob. I wanted to cut each mortise for the slats on the headboard and footboard using my mortiser. Unfortunatly even with the 3" column extension that came with it it was still a 1/2" too short. I ended up cutting a 3/8" groove the length of both parts of the hb and fb. I cut the 1 3/4" spacers to fit between the slats on a 3 degree angle so they would wedge in the groove and glued them in alternating with using a short piece of slat as a template. After they were all glued in (48 of them if I remember correctly) and the glue dried I ran the edge through my TS to clean it up. You can hardly see the spacers. Basically I just created mortises the hard way :rofl: I almost screwed up by cutting the curve on the top of the hb and fb before I ran the peices through the TS to clean up the edge. I figured I could do that while the glue was drying. If I cut the curves first I couldn't of used my TS on the edge. I caught myself just in time.
 
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