B. Brinkley

Here's my long winded take on Amazon and EBay books and such. I am an Author. I have written a number of books on various subjects over the years. My latest book is about wood boat building that is shortened down for the beginning or novice boat builder. Amazon opened up the self publishing arena for Authors who really have no business writing, let alone publishing a book. There is so much crap out there now it has really lowered the standards that traditional publishing houses upheld. Just today I received a book that was in reality a reprint of an early 1900's woodworking book now in the public domain that some schmuck copied and put his name on the cover as the author! They really push reader reviews, yet I can promise you that most book reviews are fake and generated by commercial reviewers. On the other hand it is pretty nice to be able to write, publish, and make money on books that cover some obscure subject matter that a traditional publishing house would not touch because of their overhead. So it's a double edge sword I suppose. Ebay may have its issues, but in my experience I have never bought anything not exactly as described and I suspect most folks on here have bought tools there occasionally. Amazon rapes an Author in fees and such, so many including myself buy their own copies in bulk and then sell them on eBay as another revenue source. Writing is dang hard when doing a non-fiction book with several hundred photos and illustrations that you have to pull out of your behind all while trying to create a book that is of good quality and actually helpful to your readers. LOL Not sure where I am going with this except just be sure that you have a good idea of what's in the book before you buy it and ignore most of the reviews.

treeslayer I do plan on ordering some bolt covers from Woodcraft. That's on my to-do list. I had also considered using a Texas star plate, but those are somewhat overdone and overused around here. Thanks for the kind words fellas!

I finally finished our bed for the wife and I. It is king size and constructed of some very old heart pine that I salvaged from some dairy barn beams. I resawed the beams to get the wood sizes required and then ran everything through my planer etc. The wood is extremely hard as much as oak and machined beautifully with the great pine smell permeating my shop. I managed to hide most of the old nail and peg holes and then finished the wood with 3 coats shellac followed by hand waxing and buffing. That took a long time as there is a lot of surface area to cover. LOL This is my largest furniture project to date and I learned as I went along. I did not take any shortcuts and everything is put together with hand cut mortise and tenon joinery. I used splines to join the panel boards. I used Titebond PVA and the bed rails are fastened using old fashioned bed bolts through the ends of the tenons and posts. I did make some mistakes of course, but nothing major. I just took my time and slogged at it for about 4 weeks.

Chip did you happen to build some type of center support for your slats? I am finishing up a massive king size for myself and I'm pretty sure we're gonna need a center support beam. I'll probably build something self supporting and just place it in the center of the frame under the slats. Great looking work by the way!

I may be wrong but I think Gorilla glue is basically spray foam insulation in a bottle. I've tried it on various projects, but I have no real need for it. The biggest drawback is it's a mess to clean off your hands and other places. I just can't see what major advantage it has over other woodworking glues. It does hold well. For lamination's, I still like resorcinol glue like Weldwood. For typical joints like mortise and tenon I still like yellow glue and for gap filling I use epoxy resin.

I would suspect the top rail is probably doweled into the post. If you can't see any plugs hiding screws, maybe take a flush cut saw and cut it loose that way. You can reattach it a number of ways from underneath the top railing using a mortised L-bracket to secure it. Once you cut the top rail loose, the spindles will probably just fall out of the bottom rail which does not have to be removed anyway.

William Ng has a YouTube video on burnishing gaps to close miters. Easy to do and works surprisingly well.

I would think that it would be. Shellac with 2 coats wax. I usually use a damp cloth for glue cleanup so not much water is happening anyway. Every glue joint is a mortise and tenon and those are easy to clean up.

I'm not sure if this topic should go into the finishing section or not. Since my bed frame will have 34 different pieces on just the foot board, I am considering apply a shellac finish rubbed out with steel wool and paste wax before assembly. It is a whole bunches easier to rub out each piece individually rather than trying to get into all of the nooks and crannies on this piece. I do realize that I will have some glue squeeze-out around all the mortise and tenon joints that will need to be cleaned up etc., and some touch up will be inevitable after assembly. I'll tape off the tenons and mortise holes so they stay raw wood. Is there any major issues that someone with more experience than me can point out? I've never gone this route before...

So far Gee-Dub's suggestion to use splines has worked out very nicely! Thank you sir! Slowly but surely I am making progress on the bed frame. This pine came from 150 year old dairy barn roof beams. The photos make it look kinda washed out, but the wood is hard as heck and a dark, rich honey color. It is very nice to work with when using hand planes and scrapers and smells fantastic. One thing of concern is the wood is very heavy due to it's density and probably resin content. Should be a tank when finished.

I did not like the idea of construction adhesive either. I used plain ole Titebond yellow glue in the lift construction with no issues. The threaded rod is what gives this lift such a smooth machined like adjustment. The router sits in a lift carriage and a large bearing rides in a diagonal slot to carry the load. It's a great design that allows fine adjustment while still being quick to raise or lower with just a few turns of the wheel. If you look at the top left hand side of the lift you can see a slight gap between the plywood blocks. This is part of the brake assembly that clamps the carriage in place. Truthfully, I rarely use it except when I am using a large bit with a lot of torque. Most of the time I do not lock the lift and it never creeps or changes settings anyway because of the lift mechanism design. When it is locked and the blocks squeeze tightly together, nothing is going to move that sucker.

I built my lift directly from the plans offered at ibuildit.ca He has several youtube videos explaining it. The plans were dead on accurate and I built it in one day with no issues. It just works very well. It has almost a vernier feel to it for smooth micro adjustments and a very secure height lock. The router is very rigid with no slop. What attracted me to it was the way the lift was designed to work, and the fact that the height is adjustable from a side crank with no top crank. There are some shoddy amateur designs out there, but being a former engineer I could tell that John took his time to think this design through and thoroughly test it before he offered it to the public. His other plans are just as well designed and I also built his Biesemeyer fence that works a treat also. I have no connection with this guy, just a very satisfied customer. Pics for your amusement

Gee-Dub that is an excellent idea that I had not considered. It would be fairly easy to align the slats using a captured spline as you have shown. That would help eliminate my worries about splitting of the glued up panels as each slat can move independently to each other using that method. Thanks folks for the great advice!

Thank you everyone for the advice. I am leaning on cutting the chamfers on the router table before glue up. I will also cut the biscuits before chamfering as it will be easier to register the biscuit cutter on a square surface. The panel pieces will be edge glued and then the whole panel will float in the rail and stile frame with no glue as usual. That's a good tip about wrapping the cauls in tape. Thanks! Anybody have any ideas how much I should allow for expansion? There will three of these panels side by side with a stile in between each panel.

There is a great amount of collective wisdom in this group and I would very much appreciate some advice. I am constructing a king size bed headboard and foot board. Each will have 3 glued-up panels floating inside standard rail and stile frames. My question is should I cut the bevels for the v-grooves before glue up, or make a solid panel and then cut the grooves? My dilemma is if I cut the chamfers to make the grooves before glue up I fear that I will have problems keeping the panels flat while clamping even if I used cauls etc. If I glue up the panels and cut the v-grooves afterward using a router, I fear slipping as I am terrible with a hand held router even using a fence and one small slip and the panel is ruined. The panels will be seen from both sides so that is the reason for the v-grooves on both the front and back of the panel. Another question ; The panels are 20" tall and will be somewhere around 26 to 30" wide. How much expansion and contraction should I allow for in width when cutting the dados in the rails and styles? There will be a total of three panels side by side with stiles in between each. Lastly if someone needs to know the panels will be made from 3/4" pecan and the frame and styles will be made from some very old antique yellow pine. I have included a rough sketch to explain the layout. Thanks in advance folks!