Making a king sized head board - Part 3

I hadn't realized just how long it has been since I last updated the blog. To my loyal followers (both of you), I apologize. Progress has been slow but steady, and I found myself dragging my feet on some of the components I was less familiar with, afraid to mess up what I completed so far. The firsts on this project were cutting rabbets using a dado stack, making my own molding and cutting miters in that molding.

All of the joinery for the frame has been completed and much of it was cut by hand. With a few mortises under my belt I am becoming more comfortable with digging them out on the drill press and cleaning them up with chisels. I wussed out on the tenons and cut further away from the lines than I should have. This left lots of cleanup before final fitting.

With all of the mortises and tenons cut, I dry fit everything together. The assembly was shockingly square. After admiring the squareness for a bit I marked where the rabbets were to be cut on each part. The rabbets will hold the plywood and pleather planel. They go from end to end on the rails, but are stopped on the posts. I cut them using a dado stack, which saved hours of time compared to cutting them by hand, which is how I started. The rabbets on the rails cut in to the tenons a bit but doesn't seem to have any effect on the integrity of the joint. I squared up the stopped ends in the posts with a chisel.

Next up was drilling holes for drawboring. I successfully used this technique on my workbench and since I don't have 76+ inch clamps I figured this would be the way to go. Plus, I like the look of the pegs. I centered holes at the mortises, drilled though the front wall and stopped about half way through the back wall. Next, I put each joint back together and marked the holes on the tenons using the same brad point bit. The holes in the tenons were offset by about a 16th closer to the shoulder.

A Veritas dowel former was used to make the dowels. It felt good to smash a square(ish) peg through round hole. If only I could employ this method as successful with my day job. I cut square pegs from some cutoffs and then planed the corners off with a block plane before hammering them through the cutter.

With the dowels made I put the frame back together, this time with glue. Then I drove the dowels home which pulled the joints tight. No clamps need apply.

I came back the next night and trimmed the dowels and flushed up all of the joints. Up next is the cap and shop made molding. More on that in the next post.

As always, thanks for reading.

Jim