I have just got into building wood furniture for myself and my girlfriend. I really like it, as it is a good stress reliever for me, and I like to do stuff for her.

She has a small niece and nephew that comes to stay with her every once in a while.

She has been talking about a twin bed for them to sleep on. Well, not both at one time, but one can sleep in the bed and the other in her bed.

I want to surprise her with a bed in th enear future, but I am undecided on something.

What wood should I make it out of. I built her a nice bookshelf that is approx 46" L x 30" H x 15" D. I made it out of shelving grade pine. She loved the finish that I applied to it which was a Satin Oak finish.

I would like to make this bed out of Pine as well. Is that ok. I would really like some advice from someone that has experience with the different woods..

Thanks

 

Pine is nice but with the all the knots you will have problems with stain. You need to seal or condition pine before staining it so you will get a nice even color throughout the wood grain. My "cheap" wood of choice is popular. You can stain it to match or very closely resemble several different types of wood including my favorite to work with Cherry. Also when it comes to finishes you have to really try learn some insider secrets. When I used polyurethanes straight from the can it looked just like that (Plastic poured over wood with dust and airbubbles) I tried everything to make it look good. Treat your finish like truck paint (apply finish, color sand it, buff it, then wax it. The other thing that I have been using the last few years and I think works the best is a mixture of Danish oil, linseed oil, and polyurethane. I brush it on and then wipe it off. I use about 4-5 coats, the oils make the wood "pop" and look great and the poly slowly builds up for protection. Not good for heavy used stuff though because the poly never builds that deep.

Good luck and becareful about wood working tools once you buy some its like bombing your truck...There is always something better, newer, and easier to use that just came out.

James

 

Well, i plan on building a twin size mission bed with some mortise and tenon joints for the slats. Hope fully, those joints will make it very sturdy and not wobbly at all, plus last a long time...

What I hope to build it to look like...

Bed Picture

 

A little over-due for a woodworking thread actually. You can make the fram out of almost anything, but you should get hardwood for the slats to support the mattress. http://www.leevalley.com/home.aspx is one of my favorite places to browse if you haven't run across them yet. Excellent catalogs too, good enuff to leave on the coffee table. If the new loft is ever finished, I plan on a cedar frame bed, mostly because of the weight. Otherwise, aspen or maple with peeled bark after a couple wroms start poking around.

 

Pine, although can be a great wood, is also quite difficult to work. It is very soft, so you need to be careful or you will dent it. It will not take any abuse or wear, so it will be "antiqued" soon. If the pine has knots, you will have to seal them with shellac before any finish is applied, or they will bleed. If you do not prepare the surface well, any stain will be uneven, blotchy. If you can get very old pine, or recycled yellow pine, the story is very different, great stuff. Popular is a good wood, but its color is not great. It is used a lot
for furniture frames that is later covered. There are hundreds of woods, in your area, think about cherry, one of the best ever, probably what the bed in the picture is made from. Alder is ok, sometimes used as a cheap substitute for cherry. One thing to think about. No matter what wood you choose, it will take the same amount of labor (time) to make the bed. Some think that to save a few bucks, it is better to use a cheap wood, not true, by far, most of the cost of any construction is labor, not materials. It will take just as much time to cut a mortise and tenon in pine (and a lot harder to do) as cherry. The difference in cost of pine to cherry is not that big of a deal in the bigger picture. Hopefully you will keep the bed for a long time, so trying to save 50.00 in materials is not worth it. Go for good wood, spend the $, you will be glad you did in the years to come.
There is a ton of knowledge in the magazine "Fine Woodworking", many issues will detail "how to make" motise and tenon joints, beds, etc. It would be worthwhile to check them out. Good luck.

 

I built a twin bed for my step daughter last year out of pine. It was very easy to work with and the way that I finished it turned out pretty cool. She is big into horses so I took the plain pine and basically stressed it with a blow torch to give that old burnt wood look and then put a couple coats of clear over that. After that I took some nylon rope soaked it in a bucket of mud and cleaned it and let it dry then wraped all four bed posts in the old looking rope so that it ran up one post and over the footboard and then down the other post. Then did the same thing on the headboard. I also bought letters and attatched them from the back side of the headboard to put her name on it. Lastly I took four old horse shoes and used shoe nails and put two on the foot and two at the head (facing up for good luck of course) just to finish it off. Just posted a couple of pictures of my latest project and just a couple of the tools needed to do the work. As posted above its like bombing your truck. Theres just always something bigger badder and better that you just have to have.

Travist

 

Travist, Nice work. That is a beautiful bar.

Baja, The reason that I am going with pine is to match a book shelf that I built for her about a month ago. The bed and the shelf will be in the same room together. Cost was not an issue in the decision that I made as far as the wood, I just want the pieces to match in color. I know if I use the same stain/poly on the same wood, they will be very close, but if I use a different wood, then the colors will not match once finished.

She lives alone, and the kids only come over once in a while, so the bed will not see much abuse.

When I get a chance, I will take some pictures of the bookshelf and post them.

Also, I think I will do some detail pictures for when I build the bed.

I am about to order a mortise attachment set for the drill press today from northern tool.

It will be fun, but I think the most complicated will be making the mortises for an arced cut that I plan on adding to the headboard and footboard. I will draft up a desing and show yall what I mean.

 

I didn't realize you wanted to match the existing bookshelves, I was just throwing ideas out there, and some thoughts I present to clients when I am working with them. I get the material cost issue vs. the labor cost issue all the time. Good luck, have fun.

 

Here is one more thing that I am having a problem figuring out on this footboard, and it will also go for the headboard as well. The problem is making the cuts on the slats to match the curve, with the tenon joint in there also.How do you remove the right amount of material without cutting the tenon off? I just need to remove that little bit of an arc to match the arc of the footboard.

Any help is appreciated...

This by the way is a quickie drawing of the footboard using my CAD program. Not really to scale, but you can tell what I am talking about..

 

Belt sander?

 

I would recommend to scribe a line for the arc and sand it. It looks to be a gradual arc that wouldn't be worth setting up a router for.

Or, you could route the board in the area around the mortise so the slat shoulder at the tenon sets into it maybe 1/4". Hard to describe it as I see it in my head.

Sanding would be faster and should look nice !!

PISTOL

 

You know, come to think of it ... that is basically the same headboard that is on my bed. My slats aren't mortised but rather sandwiched between two thinner boards (the one that your arrow crosses in the CAD drawing). You could put filler slats in between them to fill the spaces if you wanted to and it would look ok.


PISTOL

 

I added the corss hatching lines to help differentiate between the slats and tha gaps. The slats are the ones that are cross hatched...

 

Are you totally, dead set on doing the mortise and tenon set up on your slats ?

You could cut some serious time and labor off the project by sandwiching the slats between the boards. You could take one thick board, cut the arc the way you want it and then rip it right down the middle on a table saw so that you have two identical boards. Evenly space and glue your slats in between them.


Either way you decide to do it, it's gonna look nice !!

PISTOL

 

Rather than use tenons for the headboard slats why not plough a rabbit into the underside of the top piece before the arc is cut?

Then slip the slats into that channel, using a cut to fit filler in between each one. This offers you some flexability in assembly and will look neat and professional. You don't have to have the fillers follow the arc curve. As a matter of fact a shadow line under there would be fine. You can practice your tenons on the bottoms of the slats, where they can all be the same.

I have an architect friend who built a bed for his gal and self out of off the self pine. After 15 years of courtship, newlyweddedness, young familyness, dogs, etc it looks great and has held up just fine. No pine is not rock maple, but wood hardens as it ages after being milled. Pine is strong enough for a bed- heck our early furniture in this country is made up of a LOT of pine. any dings and such add a patina and history to the piece. Make the rails at least 5-1/2 inchs wide for a single bed, 7-1/4 for a double etc or use thicker stock with a bevel on the top edge to keep the rail its thin look (unless you like the look of HEAVY).

Go for it. ps(use poplar for the mattress slats)

Big Jimmy