Twin Twin Beds

[JosephThomas]

Good stuff. Is it staying warm enough there for your glue-ups and eventual finishing?

[Denette]

20 minutes ago, JosephThomas said:

Good stuff. Is it staying warm enough there for your glue-ups and eventual finishing?

Yeah, warm enough!  It has been in the low 50s this week, so it's manageable.  We shall see how the weather is when I get to painting.  I plan to set up the workpiece on sawhorses in the driveway so any overspray leaves, but we'll see if the weather wants to cooperate.  I may be carefully spraying in the garage with a portable heater.

[Denette]

I got the first of the face framing done today, as well as getting the first headboard finessed to a perfect fit. Slight snag hit when I realized that just because #0 biscuits are narrow enough for my face frame, that doesn't mean that the slots that my biscuit joiner cuts are narrow enough. Much carefully-eyeballed biscuiting ensued, and I trimmed down all the biscuits I was using on the bandsaw so they would fit. The good news is that they are really just for alignment, so the lost glue surface isn't the end of the world. But it finally feels like I've got a glimpse of the end!

[Elroy Skimms]

11 hours ago, Denette said:

After seeing your glue pattern in your Shop thread, I have to admit I am a little disappointed in the quality of your work here. I expect more from you. Try and do better next time, m'kay?

-E

[shaneymack]

Just got all caught up on this. It's looking great !

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

[Denette]

After seeing your glue pattern in your Shop thread, I have to admit I am a little disappointed in the quality of your work here. I expect more from you. Try and do better next time, m'kay?

-E

I know, right? The old photo was from before I had a good glue spreader, so I was trying to get very even coverage. My brayer has ruined me!

[Denette]

The first bed is together!  The face frame went on pretty much as planned.  I installed the frame on one side at a time, starting with the bottom rail because it had something to clamp against.  I glued it, then clamped it, then hit it with 18ga nails from my new air nailer.  I did the same for the center stiles, minus the clamping because I didn't have any clamps that would reach.  Each side was finished up with the top rail, done in much the same way as the bottom one but with a bit more difficulty clamping because I had to tip the whole bed cabinet up to get a 48" parallel clamp onto it.

The tricky part of the trim was the miters at the corners between the side frame and the faux-footboard.  Frankly they were bad, and got a lot of sawdust-and-glue filler.  Looks like it's time to recalibrate my miter saw.

Still, great way to end a year!

Happy New Year everyone!

[Chet]

Nice progress.  Light at the end of the tunnel sort of stuff.

[Denette]

46 minutes ago, Chet K said:

Nice progress.  Light at the end of the tunnel sort of stuff.

Yeah, really!  I still have to do all the trim on the other bed, though.  Doing two identical pieces is nice in the sense that I am able to learn from the first one and correct it on the second, but tedious in the sense that I have to do things a second time at all, haha!

 

[Denette]

Grr.

 

I hate hardware.  I can't tell you how many times I've botched a project at the last minute because of poor quality hardware or trouble installing it.  

 

To attach the headboard to the bed base, I initially intended to use four of this style bolt per headboard:

At the hardware store I picked up enough bolts, a few cap nuts, and a few different threaded inserts, and figured that I'd just get things worked out once I had everything in front of me.  The four bolts I'd planned on actually ended working out well for me.  I drilled a 3/4" diameter hole in the backside of the base of the leg of the headboard so that the bolt could go in far enough to reach the insert, which was twisted into the end grain of the runner that makes contact with the floor.  Here's a sketchup of it because I'm too lazy to go take pictures:

So the legs each got a bolt at the base.  The other two bolts I planned on also went well.  For those, I drilled a hole through the plywood low on the back of the headboard where the headboard overlapped with the plywood that forms the end of the cabinet.  I intentionally left about two inches of overlap there so that I could put a bolt in the back and connect it to one of these bad boys:

While the bolts were a little too long to work on their own, drilling a hole through a small poplar scrap gave me the spacer block I needed to make the connection.  Honestly, I think the spacer block is a good thing anyway, because it prevents the bolt from damaging the thin veneer of the plywood.

 

So why do I hate hardware?  Simple.  Because it didn't do a good enough job, and so I had to add more.  Here's a picture of where I added bolts:

 

Someone more experienced than me may immediately be able to tell what the problem was.  If you'd like to guess, do it now!  I can wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...waiting.

 

 

 

 

Ok, got your guess ready?

 

Simply put, it wanted to bend REALLY badly.  If you pushed on the top corner, it had about an inch of give.  Totally unacceptable.  It was like it could hinge on these axes:

 

So I decided to fix the problem with a couple more bolts through the legs midway up, and, figuring that the threaded inserts would do better in poplar than plywood, I decided to put a threaded insert into the end grain of the wider bit of trim that butts up against the headboard.  Like so:

To do this I had to drill a fairly deep hole freehand with a forester bit.  That actually came off without a hitch.  I then drilled the hole for the screw and threaded insert.  No problems there, either.  Then when I inserted the insert, tragedy struck.  When I went to the threaded insert bin at Lowe's, they had a very short supply of good threaded inserts, so I got a few different varieties.  My last good threaded insert (this style:

 )

broke on me.  Getting it out involved holding pliers around the broken hex socket as I used an Allen wrench to get it out.  I then moved to plan B, which was this style of threaded insert:

When I was at Lowe's I figured that I'd just pick up a few styles and see what worked.  Well, I can tell you, these are utter garbage.  Every single one crumbled the second I tried to turn the screw.  Absolutely worthless.  And getting them out was great fun as well.

About this time I found another good threaded insert that I'd missed previously, so I screwed it in successfully and decided to do a test assembly.  When I twisted the bolt, the insert pulled right out because the wood had been so chewed up from previous failed efforts.  Great.  So yesterday I drilled our some plugs and glued them into the hole in hopes that something might be successful if it had enough tooth to grip onto it.  I went back to the hardware store, and they still had not restocked the good threaded inserts, so I figured I'd give barrel pins a try.  These guys: 

require you to drill a hole exactly in line with the bolt's path into the wood.  In theory there would be no stripping them out.  But when I bought them I didn't realize that my hole would need to be too close to the wood to be able to drill it straight enough to be any good.  I put the first one in at an angle (and too shallow) and decided that since it would thread (albeit with considerable effort), I should go ahead and try to do the other side of the headboard.  Well, the second one went in even more crooked than the first (though it did go deep enough), but the bolt still wouldn't turn without a ton of force applied.  It would have been quite a brain burner to figure out how to get these out if the first one hadn't just flat out broken the wood apart and rolled off on the floor.  

 

The splinter was re-glued into place, more replacement plugs were glued in place.  To remove the first barrel plug I had to drill out a small hole (at the cost of a 1/16" drill bit), then use a reverse-threaded drill bit designed for removing stripped-out screws in the small hole I'd drilled.  It came out, but at the cost of three drill bits.   It is also plugged up again, and the glue is drying.

 

I've ordered more good inserts from Amazon, because Lowe's apparently can't be troubled to keep anything worthwhile in stock.

 

I'm done for today.  Bleh.

 

[wtnhighlander]

Quick tip to emulate those barrel nuts - first, drill a hole as if for the barrel nut (this method is much more forgiving). Then glue a hardwood dowel into the hole. This provides a cross-grain plug, into which you can thread a lag screw. The lag would otherwise never hold in the end grain piece. If your plug is a decently hard species, you can even tap threads into it and use a machine-thread bolt, just like tbe barrel nut. The hold surprisingly well.

[Denette]

I haven't updated in a couple of days because bed 2 has been in progress, and it was basically identical to bed 1. Today I am proud to announce that all the boards are together! All that remains to do is get the mounting hardware for the headboard onto bed 2, route a 1/8" chamfer or roundover on all the edges of the trim, sand, and paint.

I took wtnhighlander's advice on the threaded inserts. I drilled the hole out to ½" with a forstner bit and hammered & glued in several oak plugs I cut with a plug cutter bit on my drill press.

The extra grip from being threaded into face grain rather than end grain plus the added length of my new threaded inserts helped a lot. It feels pretty solid this time. I drilled a shallow space with a ½" forstner bit for the head of the insert to rest, then drilled half the depth with a ⅜" bit, and finished the second half with a 5/16" bit to account for the taper on the threaded insert.

Before:

Gluing up:

I'll post another pic of the final look of the threaded insert later - forgot to take one earlier.

Not too far to go now!

The next big challenge will be spraying on the latex paint inside the garage, because outside it is freezing. Any tips on indoor spraying in a garage with no ventilation aside from the garage door, and heat only provided from a portable heater? I know you're not supposed to spray below a certain temperature, but I'm not sure why. At least with water-based latex paint there's no risk of exploding!

[Chet]

The biggest thing with painting below recommended temperature is that it takes foooorever to dry and some paints can end up with a permanent tackiness to them under these conditions.  I would want to be as close to the manufacturers recommended temperature as possible.

Denette it seems like you have an awful lot of floor space in your shop.  It is becoming apparent that you do not have enough tools yet. 

[mat60]

Cover up anything you dont want overspray all over and as Chet said I would also try to keep it warm in the shop while its drying.

[wtnhighlander]

... Denette it seems like you have an awful lot of floor space in your shop.  It is becoming apparent that you do not have enough tools yet. 

I'm betting@Denette, like me, must devote considerable floor space to a "lumber transport device".

[Denette]

I'm betting@Denette, like me, must devote considerable floor space to a "lumber transport device".

Sort of! Here in Arkansas we tend to have car-friendly weather 364 days a year. That one day is an almost annual event when a freak hail storm starts raining baseballs on us, so we have to be able to move the shop stuff all out of the way and scoot the cars in the garage. It's so tight to fit both that when I drive the second one in I have to climb out a window, but it's better than hail damage.

[Denette]

The twin twin beds are structurally complete! This is a huge milestone in this project. This week I'll focus on surface prep (sanding, filling holes, and rounding over the sharp corners) and I'll paint as soon as the weather permits. The light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter!

 

There they are, both ready for lots of sleep and storage!

 

The headboards are fully detachable, and are mounted to the base with six sturdy bolts.

 

Detail shot of the headboard. Once the paint goes on the different boards will seamlessly blend together at the corners for a sleek modern look.

 

 

As per the design specifications, TONS OF STORAGE. You could get lost in the storage space in this bed. The cubby holes were custom-size to match a set of baskets my client purchased to go along with the bed. Custom furniture is nice like that!

 

 

A little taste of the problems left to solve can be seen in this picture.  The edges are all sharp, and I'm either doing a 1/8" round over or a chamfer - any opinions on which would look better?  There is also a bit of  visible gap in this picture.  Fighting gaps has been a bit of a challenge in this project.

 

 

Still though, for a project that's going to get a coat of paint, it's coming along pretty well!  Later this week the weather should give me an opportunity for spraying on a coat or two.  Any recommendations on whether or not to use primer, and how many coats to apply?

 

I'm tired, so I'm going to go sleep on one of the beds now.  Good night!

 

[pkinneb]

They look great!

 

[drzaius]

Give it a little chamfer with a block plane & then lightly hand sanded. Quick & easy.

[Sac]

^^^^ What they said.  As for the gaps. Timbermate Woodfiller my friend, that stuff is just plain awesome.  Especially if you are going to paint.  I have no idea about primer.. can't help you there. (I suck at finishing.)

 

 

[Denette]

I cleaned out my shop vac and harvested the uber-fine shaving dust to combine with glue and used that as a hole filler, as well as some 3M fiberfill I've got lying around. Will look into Timbermate for the next project, looks like good stuff. Spent most of my afternoon yesterday rounding over edges and chiseling the corners in square where the router left them round. I went with the ⅛" roundover bit. Small enough to look classy but soft enough for rambunctious boys to be safe around.  Here's a close-up of the roundover, as well as the gappiest miter joint ever, filled with dust & glue.

Pretty proud of how well the hand-chiseled corners turned out:

The point of contact between the headboard and bed base is far less obtrusive with the edge treatment in place:

[Denette]

Ladies and gentlemen, we have paint!

Before:

After:

And to boot, my garage now has a lovely speckled white floor! (Oops)

[Chet]

I wouldn't worry about it, its a shop floor.  Mine looks like a color chart from your local paint store.

The beds are coming along great.

 

[Denette]

Thanks for the kind words!  Up close it's a little less pretty though.  I'm not sure what went wrong that caused it.  Lots of big globs of paint splattering out rather than a fine mist like I expected.  I've only used my HVLP for oil-based finishes before, and those were a huge pain (and waste of mineral spirits) to clean out of the sprayer.  This time I  opted for latex paint because it would be easier to clean up.  The paint is super thick, so I cut it roughly 2/3 paint to 1/3 water after it seemed to glop up the HVLP when I tested it, but to be honest it still wasn't super fine.  I don't want to cut it too far with water, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what I'm doing.  I assumed that it'd spray a super-fine mist like a spray paint can, but instead it sprays in a pattern not unlike the splatter from popping a wet towel.  I tried turning my HVLP speed all the way up and all the way down, and that didn't seem to help...  

 

I really hate paint.

[Chet]

Maybe you need to change the tip to something with a bigger opening.  Just for the heck of it, try a 50/50 mix on some scrap. Are you running the paint through a paper cone filter into your cup?