Arts & Crafts Mission Style Bed

[Shayne]

I'm about to tackle the largest project to date, the famous Mission Stylel Bed form Wood Magazine (http://store.woodstore.net/arcrbemist.html). I feel confident that I will be able to handle this project, nothing seems to complicated although it will probably take me a while since I'm a weekend warrior mostly.

Few things that I am planning to deviate from
1. I'm going to use Cheery - I'm a cherry snob and I have garage full of it
2. I don't like the idea of creating the posts from beveled pieces, just doesn't seem like I will get nice corners. I've done some beveling before on small things and it was a pain and I needed to add some putty to make it look better. Plus I happen to have some 12/4 lumber lying around so why not use it?
3. All my other lumber is 4/4 rough, so I will only have ~3/4" lumber when I plane it. All the rails call for 1 1/4" thickness. I am considering facing gluing my lumber to get the desired thickness. Any thoughts whether that should be ok and if I need to do anything besides just gluing it (i.e. biscuit joint it too?).
4. Where can I find the iron angle hardware? I haven't looked around yet, so I'm not sure if this is something I can simply pick up at Lowes/HD.
5. Has anyone else out there built this bed and is willing to share thier experiences and tips?

Thanks in advance

 

[Sabre2]

Shayne,

I just built a King size arched top headboard from Woodsmith #145. The posts were 3 1/2" square and they had a way to cut and glue them up if you are interested. The only problem I had was the size of the project. My shop is 11'x19'. As I was progressing finding a place to put the on going project was a real pain. As far as the hardware, Rockler or Woodcraft will have any type of assembly you want.

Hope this helps

Gary

 

[DaveO]

I'm about to tackle the largest project to date, the famous Mission Stylel Bed form Wood Magazine (http://store.woodstore.net/arcrbemist.html). I feel confident that I will be able to handle this project, nothing seems to complicated although it will probably take me a while since I'm a weekend warrior mostly.

Few things that I am planning to deviate from
1. I'm going to use Cheery - I'm a cherry snob and I have garage full of it
2. I don't like the idea of creating the posts from beveled pieces, just doesn't seem like I will get nice corners. I've done some beveling before on small things and it was a pain and I needed to add some putty to make it look better. Plus I happen to have some 12/4 lumber lying around so why not use it? Long miters would be a pain to do, a miter lock bit in a router table is a way to make it easier. The draw backs with using solid stock are finding it dry enough in that thickness, and the different grain patterns on the different faces of the post. You can avoid the grain pattern issue by using rift sawn stock. A&C furniture was often made with QS Oak, and the 4 sided mitered posts/legs provided QS grain pattern on all faces. This might not be as important with Cherry as it doesn't have such a strong grain pattern
3. All my other lumber is 4/4 rough, so I will only have ~3/4" lumber when I plane it. All the rails call for 1 1/4" thickness. I am considering facing gluing my lumber to get the desired thickness. Any thoughts whether that should be ok and if I need to do anything besides just gluing it (i.e. biscuit joint it too?). Straight face lamination would be plenty strong and with a good grain match almost undetectable. Biscuits won't add much. Make your stock wider than needed so you can trim off any edges that don't line up perfectly. You could drive some small finish brads into the faces of one piece of stock and clip off the heads leaving a small point, that will dig into the face of the other piece, helping to prevent slippage as you glue up your lamination (just make sure the brads are no where near any cut lines)
4. Where can I find the iron angle hardware? I haven't looked around yet, so I'm not sure if this is something I can simply pick up at Lowes/HD. I would second the "check Rockler" thought :icon_thum
5. Has anyone else out there built this bed and is willing to share thier experiences and tips?

Thanks in advance

Please post some pics of your progress, a bed might be in my near future plans and I would love to learn from your experiences :icon_thum

Dave

 

[KurtG]

I have the plans to make the same bed. My plan is to start in about 2 -3 months. It will be my first big project so hopefully you will have some good tips for me. :icon_thum

 

[Nativespec]

Shane:

I built this one w/o plans. I used mortise and tenons-quite a bit of work and I used lock miter joints for the posts. I bought the rail hardware from Woodcraft. If I were to build it again, I would use solid posts and, now that I have a Domino, I woud use loose tenons. You will need to do a lot of sanding-I spent about 2/3 of my time sanding and finishing.

Here is mine: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showphoto.php?photo=11422

David

 

[Alan in Little Washington]

I'm getting ready to make some A&C stuff with QSWO so I am going to miter the legs so the ray fleck is visible on all four exposed sides of legs.

On a lot of their pieces the Stickleys would glue up mitered posts from four pieces (not sure if they used lock miters) to get ray fleck on all sides and so glue lines were at the corners and nearly invisible. With Cherry, the ray fleck issue is moot, however you'll have glue lines to contend with if you just glue up two 3/4" pieces, so it comes down to living with glue lines, getting thicker stock for the bed posts, or doing miters so the glue lines are at the corners. A shaper or router table is the only way to go for a clean miter.

If the corners of the legs will be beveled, another method also used by the Stickleys which saves on the amount of QSWO used and is easier to do, is to laminate thin (1/4" or so) QSWO pieces to the two flatsawn leg faces. Bevels are used on the corners to hide the glue lines. This should work well with Cherry legs to hide glue lines since you would glue the thin pieces to the faces where there would be a glue line in the middle of the leg from laminating two pieces of stock.

Yet another method for situations where only two adjacent leg faces may be visible and need the ray fleck, is to glue up the stock and mill it to slightly over the desired final thickness (approx 2") (my stock is all 4/4 and 5/4). Then use the TS to rip the piece in half with a 45 deg bevel cut, flip the halves end for end and glue them up. Then mill them to final thickness. That way the glue line is at the corner and the two main faces will have ray fleck. Only the narrow reveal from any inset face frames or panels, etc. will show flat sawn grain.

 

[Nativespec]

Tauntom has a book titled: "In The Craftsman Style" and that is where I got my inspiration for my bed. It has a good section regarding Stickly legs and other relevant topics. It is worth buying in my oppinion.

Thanks,

Davdi

 

[Shayne]

Thanks for everyones quick replies.

I too am fearing having the room in my small garage shop to work on this, but I'm up for a good challenge. I checked our Rockler and they have the hardware. I will have to check out Woodcraft next time.

Thanks for the advise about straight face lamination. I had convinced myself it would be fine, but it's good to hear someone else agree.

David the picture of your bed looks awesome! I hope to have a similar picture in the future. I never heard of a lock miter joints before. I checked it out and it seems like a good option. I will keep that in mind for future products. Also I never heard about a loose miter either. So if I don't have a Domino and I don't have a tenoning jig, any advice for which route I should take? I have been debating on getting a tenoning jig since I do need a new tool for this project.

I am looking forward to all the sanding and the finishing! Ok so I lie as these are the two items that I dread the most but it's all part of the fun.

Thanks for everyones wisdom and advice. I'm going to try to take pictures throughout and keep rough track of my hours invested. So far I have only picked through lumber pile and identified which pieces I am going to use which was shockingly fun!

Shayne

 

[Nativespec]

Shayne:

The other loose tenon option would by the BeadLock-about $30 and you use a drill to make the mortise. The problem with making tenons is the length of the head and foot boards of the bed and almost impossible to do with a tenoning jig-this was quite a challenge for my bed and I did it with a router table, still not a good option. The Woodcraft in Raleigh was selling the BeadLock for either 40% or 50% off. I did not like the Beadlock because the stock was too tight and I had to mill it down with chisels and sandpaper-but for the money, it is not a bad option. The slats on my bed were about 11/16" thick and the tenons were cut on 3 sides to about a 1/2"-glue up was quite a challenge and I used a slow set white glue. If you have the money, the Domino would be the way to go because you could cut loose tenons for all of your parts. My bed is made from cherry and I stained the project-I would not do this again. I suggest that you spend a lot of time to match the wood because trying to stain cherry uniformly is time consuming-I sanded off the finish numerous times in some places.

Thanks,

David

 

[DaveO]

There was a really good article in the latest Wood mag. about different methods of loose tenon joinery and their strengths and weaknesses. Beadlock ranked just under true integral M&T joinery for strength, and time. The results for the Domino where interesting as compared to a biscuit joint.
Dave