Loft bed

[Bryan Hunt]

My youngest son asked me to build him a loft bed. I said sure, no problem. I figured it would't take too long. I was wrong! 340 hours later (translates to about a year - only working the occasional weekend - I have a day job and most weekends are consumed by my middle son's baseball tournaments) he finally had a loft bed to sleep in. The frame is Hickory and the pins are Walnut. I absolutely love the end result you get from Hickory - the journey can be painful.

Here is the end result:

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I will add some build details in the thread ...

[Bryan Hunt]

The build started with 6/4 Hickory. The legs started as 8" wide boards that I ripped down the middle, book matched and laminated. One of the boards had a bad twist in it. By the time I got it flat, it was a lot thinner than the others. The grain was so nice, I added a spacer board to keep it as a leg.

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The next task was mortise and tenon - all 30 of them. I stared using by mortiser, but the bit gave up, so I switched to my grandfather's brace until my arms gave up, then I switched to the drill press. The mortises were all finished with hand chisels. I sharpened my chisels often until that one time I didn't. It took me two hours to get a good edge back on the chisel. Lesson learned: sharpen often when working with Hickory.

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[Bryan Hunt]

One of the tenons was a bit challenging ...

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I clamped a block to the face and used it as a saw guide. I then used a combination of chisels and router plane to finish the tenons.

I got the head and foot of the bed fitted before doing the sides.

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[Bryan Hunt]

The sides were joined with though tenon and wedged pins. The narrower boards got vertical wedges while the wider boards got horizontal wedges. In hindsight, I should have gone will all horizontal wedges as the vertical ones were a pain.

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Assembling the bed was a challenge. I made a couple of helpers to keep everything aligned while I pushed the end on the through tenons.

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[Rob Luter]

That takes me back. My college roomie and I built a set in our dorm room. We used construction lumber and carriage bolts. It served us well that semester and then we sold it for a profit.

[Bryan Hunt]

I added a chamfer with a hand plane to the tops of the legs.

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Now the glue-up. I only glued 1/2 of a side at a time because I was worried about the open time and getting all of the tenons fully seated.

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Next, I glued a support block to the long sides that would hold the slats to support the mattress. The support block has threaded inserts for 1/2-20 screws to hold the slats. This is the only place in the bed that uses screws.

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I assembled the whole bed and fit the slats to the frame.

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[Bryan Hunt]

Here, I'm fitting the wedged pins. There was a lot of hand fitting because holding an exact angle with a chisel in Hickory is not very easy.

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Finally, the finish. I sanded to 220, then put down a coat of Tung Oil.

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After the Tung Oil dried, I borrowed my neighbor's spray booth and sprayed a coat of catalyzed sealer. Oh, it's awesome to have a neighbor with a car sized spray booth
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After the sealer, I applied multiple coats of grain filler and sanded 320 between coats. Some boards needed a couple of coats, some needed 10. After the grain filler, it was back to the spray booth for another coat of catalyzed sealer. I sanded to 320, then did 3 coats of catalyzed lacquer sanding 320 between coats. The final coat was sanded 320, 400, 800, 1000, 1200, then polished with 2500 and 5000.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Beautiful results! Well done, Sir!

[Jim Becker]

That's really great. Brings me some memories, too, as I had a very tiny room in the fraternity house my senior year (it was actually a closet when my dad was a brother) but it was a single so I was happy. The only way that room could be any kind of functional was with a loft bed very much like you just built for your son. It wasn't nearly as nice as yours, of course.

[Lee Schierer]

Shhhh, you're not supposed to tell everyone how great hickory is to work with. Now every body will want to do it.

Great work, It looks great and I'm sure it will be appreciated. It appears that the legs could be cut down when your son doesn't want to climb up there anymore.

[Justin Rapp]

I really like how that loft bed came out. It's really well done. I did a bedroom set out of hickory. I love the end result of hickory and my tool sharpening service also likes Hickory.

[John TenEyck]

Very nice work. Personally, I don't care for the color variation in hickory and really hate working with it, but you persevered in cutting the joinery and the end result looks great. Well done.

You might consider using a router in the future to cut mortises.

John

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Thats RAD! The Hickory is dynamic! (characterized by constant change)

[Justin Rapp]

Very nice work. Personally, I don't care for the color variation in hickory and really hate working with it, but you persevered in cutting the joinery and the end result looks great. Well done.

You might consider using a router in the future to cut mortises.

John

That is funny since I love the color variation in Hickory. 20170423_170256.jpg

[Mel Fulks]

Its nice ! To you it’s a “loft bed”, but I’m guessing that to your Son …it’s a “fort” ! One suggestion, demand that any pillow-fights be fought
on the floor.