Panels

Yesterday the dados were cut in the frame rails and stiles. Since there's a center stile (which has already been doweled to the top and bottom rails), the dados needed to be "stopped". The round slot cutter leaves an arching cut at the end of it's travel, so the stopped dadoes need to be squared up by hand. The panel will conceal them, so appearance isn't important.



The panels are more than 24" wide, and all 4 together consume almost 8' of length. This means there's no room for "spares" in one ($95!!) sheet of plywood. Hardboard is cheap, so templates were made to tweak the fit - a good thing, too, since some planing and fitting was required.
Not having enough hardboard of sufficient width to make the templates, the table saw cover was sacrificed. Obviously it was well-used and ready to be replaced, so it was cut up to make the template for the large panel. Since both assemblies are symmetrical, only one of each size is needed - but fit was verified in both sides just to make sure before cutting up the spendy stuff.



The frames are finally filled with panels.
The top rails capping each assembly are glued laminations - some stock is re-sawed to produce several thin strips, which are then glued up in to a sandwhich, and clamped in a form to dry in the proper shape. I'll have to get some pics of them in the forms.

Frame dadoes

3-wing slot-cutter. The bearing makes the resulting cut 9/16" deep, 1/4" is needed. The slot-cutter is bigger than the hole in the table so it's inserted from above, then the collet is tightened under the table - a royal pain.

Without a properly-sized bearing, another crazy jig is required to limit the stock getting any closer to the cutter than 1/4". Since curves will be cut, a radius needs sit over the cutter, and clearance allowed so the stock can be manipulated without wedging against the fence.


The bit shank length won't reach the whole cut (indexing from one side), so it's set up to take the required 3/8" of width in two passes, one on each side. This automatically centers the dado, but doesn't forgive ANY variation in stock width or feed pressure. The stock has already been flipped, the cutter is finishing the second pass, completing the dado in one of the center stiles.

In mid-cut on the curved top rail, it's obvious that burying the slot cutter in the fence wouldn't work.

Headboard and footboard frames

Footboard frame (slightly exploded)

convex and concave curves together


Headboard frame

Final version

I found dimensions on Thomasville's website and tweaked this a little more. The footboard is now a little larger - it reaches closer to the floor. The bottom edge of the rails is closer to the bottom edge of the headboard. The bottom of the mattress sits 1" below the top edge of the rails. The headboard and footboard heights match the T-ville version. The post caps still aren't pictured, but th ey will add a little less than 3"to the height of the posts.

With all these changes, the top of the mattress is now about 26".

T-ville's version has the slats 10" off the floor, so a boxspring would be required. This version has the bottom edge of the rail 10" off the floor, and the platform 7 1/2" above that (the rails are 8 1/2" wide).

Note that the footboard intercepts the mattress a bit.