Have to sneak this in

... prior to bed completion

Equipment failure!!!

Noting date for shoulder injury.
Milwaukee 5625 received yesterday.

Finials

The sketchup model
Yet another jig - this one to clip the corners on the finial blanks. It will index off the table saw fence.
The jig in action making the last clip on this piece.
All the finial blanks' corners clipped. Note that each stack is a different sized square, and of different thickness. The dowels in the foreground which the blanks will be stacked on are the wooden handles of the foam brushes used to do the finishing on the rest of the bed.
...and another jig. This one to make the chamfers on the top of the finial. It also indexes from the fence enabling very fine tweaking of cut depth.
The chamfer jig in action.
Four sides chamfered, four to go...




Routing small pieces is a potentially dangerous job, so I completely ignore feed rate for safety - which led to the cuts burning a little. Whatever scraping/sanding doesn't fix, I'm sure black ink will. Here's the rough results stacked on a dowel.

Progress update

We need a bigger house.

Next: sand this out with 220, 320, final coat of satin Waterlox. Before that, I'll probably do the finials and torsion box platform.

Home stretch

A 2x4 caul with some scraps to hold it onto the leg. The caul is shaped such that it will flatten out under clamping pressure to distribute the pressure evenly.


A 2x3 deadman on each end of the 2x4 caul allows the clamps to 'reach' the caul. Note the straps holding the pipe clamps to the deadman.


Leg posts glued to headboard panel. Biscuits keep the legs aligned to the panel front-to-back. The blue tape holds some cork onto the surface of the leg under the caul to prevent the caul marring the leg (the leg is sanded and ready for finish prior to assembly).
Each pipe clamp is two shorter pipes joined together with a threaded union to make clamps long enough - the headboard + cauls + deadmen means the clamps have to be over 6' long.
There's significantly more time involved in fiddling the crazy clamping gear together than actual woodworking here.

Next the headboard will be stained and topcoated - then the torsion boxes, finials, and it's done.

Finial Dimensions