Bed upgrade – day 2
To cut the 3/4″ wide mortises, in the extension blocks, for the headboard, I am using a 3/4″ drill bit to hog out most of the material. I grabbed my old fence from my smaller drill press, to line up and clamp my block. It was way too short and wobbly, but I managed to get the first one drilled out.
Drilling the bulk of the mortise
I clamped the block to my bench and used a couple different chisels to clean out the rest of the pocket.
Cleaning Out the pocket with a chisel
I made sure that I drilled the pocket a bit deeper that the tenon, so my excess glue would have somewhere to go.
First mortise cut out
Since the old fence didn’t work well, for the first one, I borrowed the resaw fence from my bandsaw, and clamped it in place. It was a lot more stable for the second mortise.
Changing the fence
Test fit the first two
I did a dry-fit on the headboard. One of them fit really snug, but the other was loose. This was the fault of an undersized area on the tenon, so I grabbed a thin off-cut piece of pine and traced out the shape of the tenon to create a shim.
Marking the shim
Cutting out the shim
I cut it out with my chisel, then glued and clamped it to the side of the tenon.
Shim glued and clamped
Marking the second set
While that was drying, I cut and mortised two more extensions for the other side of the headboard.
Drilling out the next pair
Before laying out the tenon end of the extensions, I created a mock-up from a scrap piece to get the right width.
Test piece to get the tenon width
Marking out the tenons
Once I determined the correct width and depth, I laid out each of the tenons.
Cutting the long sides
Standing the pieces vertically, I cut a 1″ deep kerf along each side of the new tenon.
Cutting the short sides
Initially I removed the waste by running the board along the fence. This caused all the little pieces to kick back into me or the wall behind me. Luckily they were lightweight pine…
Removing the waste from the faces
I switched to using the miter gauge. It wasn’t as exact, but I took my time, and they turned out just fine.
Removing the sides
Headboard extensions cut out
The four new extension pieces were all roughed out and ready for their fit check.
Sanding the shim to fit snug
I pulled the clamps from the shim and hit it with some 120 grit sandpaper for a second or two until it was just the right width.
Extension now fits tightly
The last part needed for the headboard is the lower cross beam. It gets mortised into the posts like the rest of the headboard, but the whole thing is the width of the tenon, so I only needed to rip a 3″ wide piece and plane it down to 3/4″ thick.
Ripping the lower cross beam
Planing the beam down to 3/4″
With that accomplished, I fit everything together. It all lines up straight and square, but I think it will ultimately be a bit flimsy. I will probably route a groove along the back and laminate a strip of pine along the full width, where it will no be seen, just to keep everything rigid.
Headboard dry-fit
Laying out the four extensions for the footboard
With the headboard done for the moment, I cut another four extension blocks for the footboard.
Next batch of mortises complete
I repeated the process of cutting in the mortise and tenons, then did a dry-fit on the footboard as well.
Dry-fit of footboard
I made these extension blocks so that they generally stood 1/4″ proud all the way around the part of the headboard, where they attached. To blend them together better, I installed my 1/4″ round-over bit in the router table, and cut a radius on each corner edge except the edges around the tenon.
1/4″ round-over of the extensions
The last thing that I did for the day was to final sand all of the extension blocks.
Finish sanding the extensions
Tomorrow is mother’s day, so I will probably not be in the shop. I will get back to work on the bed in another day or two. Happy mother’s day to my wife and all of the other Moms out there.
