I was lucky enough to get a solid 4hrs or so out in the garage today to work on the bed for Isaac. Before I could begin with the woodworking I finished off some modifications to my tablesaw (will do a seperate post about my second hand tools that I’ve sourced from places like eBay and gumtree and my restoration efforts). The modifications allowed me to securely mount larger panels of wood to the tablesaw so I took advantage of this to create nice crisp shoulders on the panel for the footboard that I then mounted into the footboard frame using some mortise and tenon joinery.
To allow for wood movement the panel is only glued in the top recess of the horizontal frame section and the top few cm of the tenons on the ends of the panel. The mortise also is ~8mm longer then then tenon so as the entire panel expands it should expand down towards the floor within the mortise.
Being in Adelaide and having such nice quartersawn timber wood movement won’t be much of an issue however given this bed is being made in memory of Isaac’s great nan I didn’t want to take any chances.
In making the tenons I got to use my Japanese saw during a project for the first time – have only used it learning how to do some dovetails – and I have to say I love the saw! Maybe it’s because of lack of experience with standard western saws or because I’ve only ever used cheap tenon saws or large general purpose saws previously but using the Japanese saw felt so natural and I was able to make the cuts so accurately (I surprised myself) that minimal clean up was required. Amazing saw! Can’t wait to use it more!
Using my old restored chisels I tuned up the tenons and did a couple of dry fits to ensure I had it all planned out for glue up.
For the most part glue up went well without too many issues.. Some of the mitred bridal joints aren’t as tight as I would have liked but they aren’t too bad for a first attempt.
Now I sit back and wait for it to dry and start getting the footboard prepared for finishing and making a start on fitting the panel of the headboard into its frame – I’ll use the same approach for the mortise and tenons except after cutting the shoulders on the tablesaw I might setup the router table and use it to remove the bulk of material to create the tenons..
So while I overestimated how much I would get done today I made good progress all the same and am moving closer to having a bed for Isaac.