Four Post Bed Build - Curly Cherry

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438
Location
Grand Rapids, MI
My sister wants me to make her a king size 4 post bed from curly cherry on short notice. So over the next couple weeks I will be slamming this thing together. I had trouble locating any 6/4 and 12/4" curly cherry here in MI, so I ordered some from PA. The 12/4 is not very curly, but it does have a sort of "super sized" bees wing pattern to it.....still very pretty.

- Hutch
 

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Ready to Turn

Thanks for the encouragement all!

Due to the cost of curly cherry my sister decided that we should laminate the bed rails to save a little on materials. The furniture maker in me would normally oppose this, but I let it go this time. :D Here you can see a piece of curly cherry sandwiched between two regular cherry boards. I glued it up into a large block. I will then resaw down the middle, leaving two bookmatched, curly cherry-faced rails. The same will be done for the foot rail.

1 Clamped Up.jpg2 Resaw Ready.jpg

The surfaces on the bed posts weren't perfect, and they needed to be hand planed to smooth out the tear-out caused by the Makita planer. Not wanting to have to smooth the entire length, I went to the jointer and made relief cuts where I knew the wood was going to be turned down narrower. I also made the relief because I didn't know how much material I might have to hand plane away if thing didn't go as planned. In the end, all I had to do was make a few passes over a 30" length.

3 Planing Relief.jpg

My smoothing plane is set up with a blade sharpened with a 5* back bevel to give it a pseudo-york pitch to help get through the curly grain without chip-out. I also cambered the edge 5 to 8 thousandths at the just the corners to make it easier to plane without leaving track marks. With the plane taking about a 2 thousandth shaving, the surfaces came out perfect. No tear-out, no track marks. Of course, I will have to run the plane over the parts again just before applying finish.

4 Hand Planing.jpg5 Planed Surfaces.jpg

After having set for a few days, a couple of the posts warped about 3/16" of an inch. But now that the areas that will accept the bed rails have been smoothed all I have to do is mount the posts on the lathe a little off center (to account for the warp), and all four edges of the square sections will be parallel with the axis of rotation.

6 Mounted on Lathe.jpg7 Barely Fits.jpg

As you can see, the 79" bed rails barely fit on the lathe. Once I get some rough shaping in, I will place a steady rest on the workpiece to reduce the flexing that will occur.

-Hutch
 
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Here's the glue-up resawed most of the way on the table saw. I took it to my part time job and finished the cut with their big bandsaw, followed by drum sanding. I then finished the surface with my smoothing plane.

1 Resaw Ready.jpg

The posts have been completed, but they turned out to be a little more challenging than expected. For all the turning I do, I guess working on 6.5 foot spindles shows me how much I have to learn. I think they came out pretty nice. The picture shows the posts with the mortises marked out.

2 Posts.jpg

I made a router template for cutting the mortises. I used 1/2" MDF, and I hardened the edge with super glue so that it would wear better. The jig worked great, the mortises are cut, and now it's on to cutting the tenons on the rails.

3 Mortise Template.jpg4 Mortises.jpg

- Hutch
 
Thanks guys!

Yeah, no matter how many passes I made with the router I just couldn't get the corners square. How frustrating. :huh: :D Actually, I don't plan on leaving the mortise corners round. They will get chopped square with a chisel before I make the tenons.

- Hutch
 
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Back at 'em....

Well, after a short vacation I am back in the saddle. This bed has to be done by August 16, so it's go time!

I have never been completely satisfied with the results I got when using power tools to cut tenons. Not to mention you have to bring the power tool to the workpiece when machining ends of boards this long. So it was back to my trusty hand tools. :thumb: Actually, I chose to use a combination of power tools and hand tools.

I first cut the bed rails to rough finished length (new term :huh:). I then cleaned up the edged of the bed rails with a plane and used a shooting board to make the ends perfectly square. I also made sure that opposite bed rails were exactly the same length.

1 Edge Planing.jpg2 Shooting End.jpg

Using a marking gauge set to 5/8" I scribed the tenons. I then clamped a piece of plywood to the board and routed the tenon to finished thickness using a spiral bit and guide bushing. Each tenon was test fit in it's specific mortise to ensure a friction fit every time. Having a Festool router for this was nice, cuz you can adjust your settings by precise increments, but a chisel was used to make the finest adjustments (soon I will be using a LN router plane for this). I didn't rout to the scribe line cuz that needs to be finished by hand as well.

3 Marking Tenon.jpg4 Routing Tenon.jpg

I then used a 1" chisel to chop the shoulders to their finished form. I would have used a wider chisel if I had one. The chop is started perfectly square, then allowed to undercut slightly as the cut finishes. I don't start the shoulder chops with an undercut because when doing the final planing of the surface the removal of more material would result in the shoulder line changing as well, ruining the perfect joint.

5 Tenon Shoulder Cuts.jpg6 Finished Tenon.jpg7 Test Fit.jpg

Once all the mortise and tenons fit perfectly I took the posts and drilled the recesses and through-holes that would accommodate the bed bolts. I then reassembled the joints to finish drilling into the ends of the rails by using the post holes as drill guides.

8 Drilling for Bed Bolts.jpg9 Drilling Deeper.jpg10 Looking Good.jpg


- Hutch
 
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