Lauren's Bed - Part 2 - Foot board

With the posts for the foot board complete, it was time to move on to the frame and panel construction for the foot board itself. I dug through the pile of curly maple to find relatively straight pieces, then used my planer sled to flatten the boards.

Next I used the tablesaw and mitre saw to cut all the pieces to size. I used the dado blade to cut a 1/4" groove through all the boards, then used the same dado blade to cut the tenons on the ends of the rails and stiles as needed.

A quick dry fit to make sure everything lines up :

The caps on the top and bottom will get a 1/2" roundover on all four edges to smooth them out, then they'll be secured to the foot board with biscuits.

Next I needed to glue up some boards for the panels. I started with some ugly twisted pieces :

I again used the planer sled and smoothed them out so they were straight :

Then over to the bandsaw to resaw them in half. Actually, I first tried one on the tablesaw but as I started to cut it pinched the blade and stopped the tablesaw. The 3hp tablesaw. Ouch. After resetting the breaker I brought it over to the bandsaw and got it done, though it again reacted pretty badly to being cut apart.

After gluing up the panels, I ran them through the drum sander for about 45 minutes to flatten them out. Quite tedious.

Now a dry fit of the entire assembly :

After sanding the panels with my random orbital sander to 220 grit, I applied Watco Danish Oil. After the finish was dry I glued up the entire panel except for the caps :

Lauren's Bed - Step 1 - Posts

Our daughter Lauren is starting to outgrow her crib. She can climb into it by herself and if she thought about it she could climb out - which would no doubt end in a fall. So it's time she moves into a big girl bed.

I built a bunk bed for Joshua and want to do the same thing for Lauren. I built his bed out of construction lumber following a plan from Canadian Home Workshop. After struggling with that construction lumber I decided I would never do that again. As I wrote earlier, I ended up buying 100 board feet of curly maple from my wood guy.

Even before I finalized the design of the bed, I knew that my first task would be to build up some posts for the foot board of the bed. That's the first thing I started with.

This is when I found out how not fun it is to work with this curly maple. Depending on the grain of the wood, I found both the jointer and the planer take big gouges out of the wood. I had to use the drum sander to clean up all of the pieces for the legs. Since the drum sander removes material very slowly this was very time-consuming. Also the kiln dried lumber I was working with was very reactionary - every piece I cut would warp and twist. It was very aggravating to put it mildly. I'm assuming that the guy who put it in the kiln dried it too quickly. I will not be buying KD wood from him again.

I tried a couple of test pieces before I built the real things. I first tried cutting 45 degree miters on the edges of the boards to glue up, but they were tricky to line up for gluing. I next looked into buying a lock-miter bit, but those seemed too expensive for this one use. I ended up cutting a 7/8" rabbet on the edge of each board, leaving 1/8" of material on the face, then gluing them together. After rounding over the edge with a 1/4" round over bit they look very solid.

The first post I glued all four sides together at once. I thought I had enough clamps and had all the joints tight but alas I did not. After unclamping I found that a few of the joints were very visible.

For the next post I glued up two pieces at a time, using some simple cauls to maintain pressure across the entire joint.

After the two pairs were dry I glued them up with more clamps and cauls. The second post came out much better.

Here's a sketchup picture of the joinery I used.

Kitchen Table - Part 3 - Finishing

This project is a big brother to the kids table I built for Joshua and Lauren earlier this year, so the finishing schedule is the same. After sanding all the parts 120-150-220 with a random orbital sander, I took them upstairs to my 'finishing room'.

I finished the table with two coats of Watco Danish Oil - Natural, following the directions on the can. I use scraps of an old t-shirt to apply the oil and wipe off the excess.

Once the oil has dried I'll apply two coats of Minwax Quick Drying polyurethane on the legs, apron and bottom of the table. I'll probably apply at least one extra coat on the top to give it a little extra protection.

Since it's winter time in the workshop and my heating situation is not so good in the workshop, I'll apply the top coats of poly in our heated house after I've moved the table in there.

Once the bottom of the top and the legs/aprons were dry from the poly I glued up the legs and aprons.

After getting it down the stairs into my workshop - I realized that I needed a little extra support for the apron / leg connection. I added the corner braces, gluing and screwing them to the aprons. Around the inside of the apron, you can see the wooden buttons I used to secure to the top to the apron.

Kitchen Table - Part 2 - Top

It took a few tries to get everything right - but the top is finally glued up. The overall size is 48x48 inches.

I first glued up three sections, each about 16". After they dried I ran them through my drum sander to smooth them out.

Next I glued up two of the three sections, then after that was dry I added the third. I used biscuits to help line them up but the glue lines were still a little off. It's tricky working with these large panels. A better way to ensure they kept aligned would have been to use a tongue and groove joint. Maybe next time.

After the top was dry I used a saw guide and my circular saw to cut it square.

Lastly, a belt sander to get rid of the uneven glue lines, then random orbital sander with 80-120-180-220 sandpaper to smooth out the tabletop and all of the legs and aprons. I'm going to apply to finish to this project before gluing it up - so that's the next step.

Rosemary's Quilting

Rosemary finished up a new advent calendar just in time for the Christmas season. There are 25 pockets and each has a little treat inside for Joshua and Lauren. A couple of the pockets didn't seem very kid friendly so Rosemary replaced them with Peanuts characters instead.

It's nice to have a custom advent calendar instead of the $0.99 one from the grocery store filled with cheap chocolate.


Here's some more pictures of Rosemary and her sewing - she's only been sewing for a year but has made some really nice projects.

Here is her fancy Bernina Activa 220 sewing machine - made in Switzerland!

Rosemary working on her first quilt.

The first quilt - completed and hung up over our family room.

A nice little quilt to hang over Lauren's door.