Loft bed build - frame

[Paul Cahill]

I am working on a loft bed for my daughter. It will take up the full length of the bedroom wall, with a stairs on the one end that is a chest and an integrated book case on the other end. It started out a painted project, but she changed her mind – a girl’s prerogative, and I decided to use some cherry that I bought about 25 years ago. It is all 4/4 and it turned out that it was not nearly as nice as I had thought with a lot more sap than I was expecting. However, given the current price of cherry I was determined to use what I had so I picked through it and set about cutting and milling. I didn’t really count how much wood it was going to take as I didn’t have to go out and buy it but it was a lot. Here it is sitting on top of the plywood that will be used too. I used about 200 bf.

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There are a total of 7 posts, each with 4 laminated boards.

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There are several rail sections, and I went with biscuits for them:

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However, there was no escaping the need or mortise and tenons. I did some practice ones and settled on an approach and embarked on the 40 or so for the frame. The drill press attachment worked OK, but I would really like to get a floor mortiser with a X-Y table – we’ll see.

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The design is quite simple – lots of straight lines. I don’t know if it follows any particular style – more functional than anything, but here is the headboard being cut on the band saw.

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After all that I was ready for the first dry fit

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There is lots to do yet, but I am well under way.

[John Fabre]

Looks great, looking forward to more pictures.

[Paul Cahill]

Making good progress, but I think I will keep my day job. I left out the drawers and an integrated bookcase so I could let my daughter start using the bed.

I am using a mix of cherry plywood and solid cherry. The plywood is edged with ¼” thick strips, that turned out quite well.

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The top of the chest and top step are glue-ups. I used cauls, per Mike Henderson’s tutorial.

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For the edges, I used the LV chamfer guide for their block plane, which worked very well – clean and consistent edges.

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For the finish I played around with some oil / varnish blends but ended up using 3 coats of Tried & True Oil Varnish. For the solid cherry, I used a washcoat of 50/50 Zinsser SealCoat & DNA and then sanded it back with 320, which did a good job controlling blotching. For the plywood, I hand sanded with 180, 220, 320 and then went straight to the Oil Varnish. When I was testing I found the washcoat left the plywood much lighter, and wasn’t necessary. I gave the finish a week between coats and boosted the temperature in the basement to about 64F for the first 48 hours. After the final coat, I brought everything up to the house and gave it 48 hours at 70F. After that, I lowered the thermostat to its normal setting and the finish turned out fine by the end of the week.

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I used poplar for the slats. It had quite a green tint, but several sessions in the winter sun turned it a nice shade of the brown. They got several coats of the thinned dewaxed shellac, as did all the interior surfaces.

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The steps on the end are all hinged and are for storage.

Finally, put it all together yesterday. We even managed to get my daughter out of the house while we installed it, so even though she has been waiting patiently for the past 6 months, we still managed a bit of a surprise at the end.

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[Ted Calver]

Phil,
That's a swell looking bed. I'll bet she loved it.

[Mark Godlesky]

Very nice. Thanks for taking the time to document your build.

[ian maybury]

Hi Paul, nice work. I'd have loved a bed like that as a kid. Good to hear that it went down well - that's the pay off really.

Should i mention that i'm jealous of that nice drill press???

ian

[Paul Cahill]

Hi Paul, nice work. I'd have loved a bed like that as a kid. Good to hear that it went down well - that's the pay off really.

Should i mention that i'm jealous of that nice drill press???

ian

Thanks for the kind comments Ian, and to John, Ted and Mark too.

I do like the DP. It has been discontinued, two times actually. I got it in 2009 after it was reintroduced. I really like the variable speed and find I ramp it up and down quite often depending on what I am doing. Interestingly there has been some discussion on this model recently as apparently there are still some new units floating around. The catch of course is how will it will hold up given that it was withdrawn from production. If I had to do it again, I am not sure what I would go with but Van Huskey suggested swapping out the motor on a regular press and adding a VFD which I thought was very clever. Time will tell how mine holds up.

For this project I used the DP a lot with the mortises. It worked fine it terms of end result, but was very tedious as the table was prone to moving after only 2 or 3 bores (due to asymetrical clamping) and had to be realigned or at a minimum, checked. With approx 500 bores that was a lot of realignment, but I have since added the Powermatic 719t, which is a whole different animal for mortises.

[Paul Cahill]

Here are the last of the build photos.

I have a covered area just outside the workshop, so I did all the plywood sanding outside to address dust.

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Next was assembly of the bookcase for the headboard.

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I did the dovetails for the drawers on the router table.

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I will make a separate posting shortly in the Project forum of the finished bed.

[Ronald Blue]

Very nice job! It turned out nicely. I am sure your daughter likes it too. Thanks for the photo journal.

[Paul Cahill]

I will make a separate posting shortly in the Project forum of the finished bed.

Here is the finished project (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?187736-Cherry-loft-bed-complete).

Paul