The Sleigh Bed: Part VII

Hi all,

Now that the sleigh bed was finished, it was time to do the staining and varnishing.
My wife Pauli handled all that.  After I finished the headboard assembly, I took the headboard assembly to the Bunny Mansion (our small art studio in the back yard) for the staining and varnishing.  Usually, we have used an oil based Watco sealer stain which penetrates very well but takes a long time to cure -- three days.  We wanted the sleigh bed to be done in time for a Christmas delivery so we looked at water based stains.  Our daughter Qaitlin picked out a stain plus dye combination that used a walnut base with a cinnamon dye added.  So while I worked on the tailboard assembly, Pauli started the staining.  Here is Pauli in her "staining" outfit:

The water based stain was a lot more difficult to use than the oil based Watco.  Pauli had to be quick about spreading the stain and wiping it smooth as it dried very fast.  So there was a tendency for the stain to show swirls and other patterns if Pauli wasn't careful.  But Pauli was and the only thing I really did was to help her by picking up the headboard assembly so that she could work on the other side.  These assemblies were big -- like 48" tall and 63.5" wide and being made of 2" thick ash very heavy.  So I did the heavy lifting whenever possible.  Water based stains when they dry raise a fuzz on the wood so it is important to lightly sand with 320 grit after the stain is applied.  Pauli made the stain by mixing 1 part Cinnamon to 3 parts walnut in a steel bucket which we could close up each day.  After the first application of the stain and the sanding, she then eyeballed rubbing on some additional cinnamon highlights.

She repeated this process on the bed rails which I had by this time brought into the bunny mansion too.
This is what the headboard assembly looked like:

and the bed rails looked like this:

Pauli then added three coats of satin varnish sanding between each coat.  After a week and a half, I finished the tailboard assembly, moved it into the Bunny Mansion and Pauli did the same thing to it.  When that was done, we moved the pieces into the house so I could add the finishing touches.  We assembled it in my home study.

Qait's mattress fits on top of cross slats which are covered with plywood that has been wrapped in batting and sheets.  The support slats looked like this:

Then the plywood is added:

And the batting and sheets:

The sleigh bed was now done and needed to be driven to Charleston, SC where our daughter lived.  It took awhile to pack it into the van -- we used every blanket and pillow we had!!-- but after a 4 hour drive it was installed in Qait's apartment.  This is what it looked like:  first, Dad and Qait

Then, the sleigh bed with the Queen of stain and varnish!

So a large project done!  And to put it all in perspective, here is the original pile of wood:

Then after a lot of work leaving this pile of scraps

once again, the finished project!

The next projects involve writing some stories, some software development and finishing up some technical books.  And some electronics!!

The Sleigh Bed: Part VI

Hi all,

This post is about how I did the slats to make the headboard and footboard for the sleigh bed.
The original design used slats separated by spacers.  Let's look at the headboard.
The top is the crest rail, the bottom in the cross rail and the slats fit into a dado cut into the
bottom of the crest rail and the top of the cross rail.  You can see the basic pictures in Part V of
this post.  The assembly was a lot easier in that case.  You would cut the top and bottom of the slat
to fit the dados, put in a spacer and install the slat by twisting it into place.  Of course, as you got to the end of the headboard, the twisting and popping into place got a little tricky. However, the spacers were what
made it all work because it gave you some leeway to twist.

My version does not have spacers, so I had to make enough slats to fill in the headboard
and figure out a way to get them installed.  Each slat for me was 1 13/16" wide so I needed
a bit more than 34 slats to fill in the board.  Essentially I cut the notches to make each slat fit into
the dadoes one at a time, glued them together carefully.  This gave me a large piece of curved wood
about 17" by 62" which then had to be trimmed to 60" wide to fit the headboard.

It sounded so simple, but as usual the details were difficult.  It was hard to line up the
34 slats so they fit right and when I cut the slats out on the bandsaw I was not perfect, of course,
so once the glue set I had to bring the board down to a smooth finish using whatever tools I could find.
That took a while!

Then once I was satisfied with the board, I had to glue it together.  The head board was so large
it was unwieldy and so I was pretty nervous when I started the assembly!!  It worked out fine,
but I did sweat blood as they say!!!

So with my introduction done, let's go over the details.

Here is a typical picture of how the bandsaw setup to cut out the slats looked like.  It was the same for the headboard and footboard slats, although they, of course, were slightly different in shape and length.
I laid out 34 slats for each type of board on the 2" ash stock (actually 1 13/16") and then rough cut them
so they fit better on the bandsaw.  Then I cut out all of the slats.  Naturally that took awhile and I was very careful as repetitive cuts are the most dangerous types of cuts for amateur woodworkers.  Cutting out the
slats required my fingers to guide the movement through the blade pretty close to the blade sometimes.
So you have to know where your hands are at all times.  So I took frequent breaks.
When I did the headboard slats I thought I could help with the alignment for the glueing step by
drilling holes for 1/4" dowell rod through all the slats with my drill press.  That way the slats would align nicely.  Here are a few slats assembled that way with the dowells inserted.

However, as I said, the dowell rod alignment idea did not really work out and so I didn't use it when
I did the slats for the tailboard.  There were several problems.  First, 1/4" dowell rod wiggles a bit so the alignment is imperfect and second,  I cut the ends of the slats individually to fit the dadoes and then
did the assembly.  In the process of cutting the ends of each slats I moved the slat alignment holes
a bit up or down in each one.  I found this out when I tried when I tried to dry assemble the headboard
using the dowell rods as the alignment key.  Of course, it didn't work as the dowell rod only went in a few slats before it hit wood and was kept from sliding in.  Still, at the time I thought it was a great idea!!
Live and learn as they say.

Here are a few slats just set in place into the bottom dado.  They don't fit into the top dado but you can get the idea and see where we are going with this.

Now to fit the slats into the dado, we use the crest rail alignment cutoffs we made earlier.
We install it into the legs using dowell rods.

We cut the slats to fit into the bottom dado, then put the slat in place and mark how it should fit into
the top dado.  Once that is done, we take the slat to the band saw and cut out the notches.
We had to fine tune this process a few times.  The next picture shows a plywood slat which is
a bit off center in the bottom dado, so we didn't really use this one.  Instead we cut a new
practice slat, fit it into the bottom dado and then measured for the top one.  We did this
iterative process until we were satisfied with the look of the slat in the dado.

The finished practice fitted slat became our master which we used to mark
all the slats we had already cut.  So we mark each slat, cut them on the band saw
and then went back to the front of the bed and checked the fit.  It it seemed to tight
we trimmed a bit on the bandsaw.  We did this for all 34 slats on both the headboard and the tailboard.
Just slow and careful work.  The "master" slat looked like this:

Here is a typical rough cut slat fitted into place.  You can clearly see there will be a lot of
smoothing and sanding to come!!

and here is a picture that shows me using the master slat to mark the cutouts for the dadoes on one of the rough cut slats.

The marked slat then looks like this and I take this to the band saw and cut out the notches.

As you might expect, all the band saw work and the later sanding and smoothing steps generate a lot of dust!
I was very careful to protect my ears and my lungs as you can see in this picture.

Once all the notches are done, the assembly begins.  I carefully cleaned out each dado.
I went back and used my drill to enlarge each dowell rod hole for the crest rail
by wiggling the bit around.  The dowell rod needs some slack so you can get all the pieces fitted.
I also went and made sure each slat slipped nicely into its place in the dado on top and bottom.
I did this in the dry assembly stage.  I numbered each slat so that I could check its fit
in the particular place in the dado slot it was supposed to go.  At this stage the dry assembly looked something like this.  The alignment marks didn't actually work out but at this point I thought they would!

Once I thought I had everything set, I laid the bottom rail on my benches and fit the slats into the bottom
dado.  This gave me a dry assembly that looked like this.

Then came the glueing.  This was pretty intense as I had to apply and spread glue to both sides
of the interior 32 slats and on one side of the outer two slats.  But still a lot of glue and it had
to be done relatively quickly.  Here is what is looked like clamped up.

Next, both sides had to be smoothed and sanded.  I used bench planes, hand scrapers,
a belt sander and a rotary sander.  The best thing was the rotary sander with 40 grit.
It just took a lot of time: 6 hours or so for both sides of the headboard and about 4 hours
for both sides of the tailboard.
The finished headboard looked like this.

Then the headboard had to be assembled: it had to fit into the crest rail and the bottom rail.
That was hard to do.  I did it by placing the bottom part into the bottom rail dado on my benches,
propping up the top and fitting the crest rail to the headboard.  I had to go back and fine tune a few
places to make the pieces slide in smooth.  Then I went to one side and fit the leg on that side
onto the cross rail leaving it out a bit.  I had to fine tune the mortise/ tenon fits a bit too so they
moved smoothly in and out.  Once the bottom was it, I carefully got the crest rail on that side
started.  That's where it is essential you have some play in  the dowell rod it as you have
to wiggle a bit.  Once it was started I used the flat of my hand to pop it in some more
so the fit was in about 3/4 of the way.  I then did the other side the same way.
Then  I used a block of wood and my hammer to get it snug.  Once I was sure it all worked,
I took it a part and then did the same thing with glue.  I glued the mortise and tenon joints
and the dowell rods.  I also added glue into the dado slots.  Then I used a lot of clamps.
Here is a picture of how the clamping looked for the tailboard assembly.

At this point, the headboard assembly was pretty close.  I looked it over and
added a mix of white glue and ash dust to imperfections.

The board with the imperfections looked like this before I smoothed it out.

The headboard was almost done and looked like this:

I was a bit unhappy with where the top of the slats fit into the crest rail dado
and although I tried hard you could still see a gap there.

The gap was worse on the head board as you can see above, although I did do a better
fitting on the tailboard. So I rounded an edge of an ash board
and then cut 3/8" wide strips which I glued to the top of the headboard and attached with
a pin nailer as well.  Then I went back and sanded both sides of these added strips so they
fit seamlessly into the crest rail.  I did the same thing for the footboard.
Here is the tailboard all done.

The last thing I did to clear up the look of the headboard and tailboard was to carefully go along the bottom edge where the board assembly fit into the cross rail dado with a sharp chisel to make sure all of the slats fit into the dado evenly.

Next, the bed had to be stained and varnished!!