Dave Shawley
01-08-2009, 4:42 PM
I'm not sure if this is the right forum or not for this sort of an issue, so feel free to move it if I should have plopped it somewhere else.
The misses and I were rearranging the bedroom last night and when she moved the bed the rail split the bottom of the headboard!! The construction is pretty simple - an 1/8" mortise down the middle with two metal pins pressed through it. The rail is a basic metal rail with two hooks on it that goes into the slot and sits on top of the metal pins. She pulled on the bed and the pins pulled a chunk of the headboard out. The attached pics explain the damage better than my rambling.
106289 106290
Anyway, now I'm left with the question of how to best fix this. I could buy a new headboard but what fun would that be? My first thought is to make a dovetail like joint and replace the long metal rails with some red oak or something economic:
106291
The slot and circular plugs are already there so I drew them in as well. I was going to attach the rail with connector bolts (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=368) or something similar to make it easy to take apart whenever we have to move things around. Chances are that I will have to replace a chunk of the panel since it blew out pretty badly so the entire dovetail section might end up being new wood.
Given my current unhappiness with the bedroom set that we have, I will probably be building a new bed sometime in the near future so I'm looking for something to get everything back together again in the short term. My biggest concern is that this approach is going to fall apart or is just structurally unsound for some reason.
Thanks in advance for any comments or other thoughts.
The misses and I were rearranging the bedroom last night and when she moved the bed the rail split the bottom of the headboard!! The construction is pretty simple - an 1/8" mortise down the middle with two metal pins pressed through it. The rail is a basic metal rail with two hooks on it that goes into the slot and sits on top of the metal pins. She pulled on the bed and the pins pulled a chunk of the headboard out. The attached pics explain the damage better than my rambling.
106289 106290
Anyway, now I'm left with the question of how to best fix this. I could buy a new headboard but what fun would that be? My first thought is to make a dovetail like joint and replace the long metal rails with some red oak or something economic:
106291
The slot and circular plugs are already there so I drew them in as well. I was going to attach the rail with connector bolts (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=368) or something similar to make it easy to take apart whenever we have to move things around. Chances are that I will have to replace a chunk of the panel since it blew out pretty badly so the entire dovetail section might end up being new wood.
Given my current unhappiness with the bedroom set that we have, I will probably be building a new bed sometime in the near future so I'm looking for something to get everything back together again in the short term. My biggest concern is that this approach is going to fall apart or is just structurally unsound for some reason.
Thanks in advance for any comments or other thoughts.