King size oak headboard

[Woodenfish]

I built this headboard for a friend who owns a very tall king size mattress set earlier this year. The posts are a lamination of 5-4/4 boards, the top shelf, stiles and rails are 5/4, the raised panel is 4/4 and the lower rail is a lamination of two pieces of 3/4" oak plywood capped top and bottom with 4/4 oak. Searching through my material stack I found a few boards with deeper coloring and thought that would add interest to his design while keeping within a tight budget. A thin oak lattice added to the underneath of the shelf helped visually anchor it to the top rail. The finish is a coat of natural oil based stain allowed to fully cure followed by a few sprayed coats of Target Coatings WB amber shellac and topped with about 9 coats of semi-gloss USL. Needless to say the proceeds of the sale were quickly absorbed with Festool purchases. ;D

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[Eli]

Looks great. So does it just get fastened to the wall, or will you build rails and a foot as well?

 

[Woodenfish]

Thanks Eli! This was built for a young couple with modest needs so the plan had to be downscaled from my original idea. The headboard is carriage bolted to the existing steel bed support frame.

 

[tvgordon]

That looks really nice.  How did you join everything together - mortise and tenon?
Also, how did you make the raised panels - router, tablesaw, shaper?
Tom.

 

[Woodenfish]

For projects such as this I have found cutting the joints for the stiles and rails are quickly done with the tablesaw. The raised panels were formed on a router table and have a slight back cut to help center the panel flush with the frame. The posts are connected to the field and the lower rail with mortise and tenon.

To cut the mortise's I used a homemade mortising jig attached to a plunge router. The jig has two adjustable fences to allow for centering the bit and they trap the post to track the bit down the cut like a train on a rail. I used this same router jig although with one fence removed and the bit depth raised to cut the tenon. Having a Domino or maybe even one of the Festool TS plunge saw and guiderail would have made that cut alot easier.

My photography skills are really sad and the pictures don't do the piece much justice. The raised panel field is a glue up of three 7' boards that were crosscut, machined and installed in order so the grain is continuous and allowed to flow left to right.

 

[Dave Rudy]

Beautiful work!  What festools did you get?

At risk of hijacking, would you domino experts tell me how you would domino instead of m&t?

Thanks for sharing Woodenfish.

Dave

 

[Eli]

Beautiful work!  What festools did you get?

At risk of hijacking, would you domino experts tell me how you would domino instead of m&t?

Thanks for sharing Woodenfish.

Dave

I'd do up the panels first, then attach the legs and spreader, then domino down the top rail. Really it's the same. Everywhere he's done a M+T, do a domino instead.

 

[Woodenfish]

Creating the mortise and tenon on the posts and frame with the router jig was slow, noisy, messy and cumbersome with the heavy parts. Having a Domino/CT at that time certainly would have alleviated all of that but at the time of assembly it had yet to have been released. The only M&T joints used were to connect the panel frame and lower brace to the posts. The top shelf was glued and clamped to the top frame rail. To achieve a good seal of the shelf over the end grain of the posts I drilled, countersunk, screwed and plugged 2 holes with matching face grain dowels on each side.

I have another upcoming bed project to complete this time using a new Domino and some bea-u-ti-ful Zebrawood that came my way in a very sweet deal. I'm still throwing together a few design ideas for a unique frame and panel design using this lumber so any ideas would be most welcome.

 

[Eli]

What are you thinking about for the frame wood. Something dark or something light? The zebra wood (heh) be the panel?

 

[Woodenfish]

The Zebrawood that I was able to purchase was the dealers last seven pieces of 4/4 x 8" x 8' rough stock. I paid under a $100 for the whole pile and to get more the current local rate is about $16+ bd/ft. I'll think I'll limit the Zebrawood usage for vertical oriented panels not the framing and use what will be remaining for some more bedroom pieces.

Milling this beautiful lumber has been a chalenge do to grain tearout. Running panels through a wide belt sander seems like it will be the way to go. I guess this wood might not take to a raised panel cutter so I'm thinking going flat. I haven't decided as to what other lumber would best frame this species.

 

[eweber]

If you like color contrast and want to stay exotic you could use some African Wenge with the Zebrawood.

Emmanuel