Making a king sized headboard - Part 4

With the frame of the headboard assembled it was time to embellish and add the components that will tie the design to rest of the furniture in our bedroom. The original bedroom set included the headboard, two bureaus a mirror and night stand. The remaining pieces all have a similar profile at their top that includes a cap and angled molding. The angle is different on each piece but they all have the same structure.

The cap was easy, just a straight board ripped to length and width. The hardest part was dialing in the length and width, which had to over hang the molding equally on the front and sides by an eye pleasing and similar-to-the-existing-furniture amount. About half an inch, maybe a bit less.

I marked out the molding's profile on the end of a board and colored in the area to be kept.

The first cut defined the square lip. This is also the perspective of how the molding will be installed, with the top pressed up to the cap and the back (left side in this pic) against the rail.

Next, the angle was cut. This was the first time I set my table saw's blade to anything other than 90 degrees and lining up the blade so that it didn't cut off the lip required some fussing. I had considered doing this with my rabbet plane, but I am falling out of love with it, at least for this project. Maybe it's not the right tool in this case.

All that was left after this was to rip the molding off. I mistakenly deleted that picture as well as the pics of gluing on all the pieces to the frame. I needed the room on my phone to install an update and removed them before they got backed up. I use Google Photos for this and it does a great job of automatically backing up, when it is open. It does need to be open first though. Live and learn.

Before ripping off the molding it needed a bit of finessing. That fussy angled cut left some extra material near the lip and the lip itself wasn't a perfectly flat due to the angle of the teeth on the saw blade. A chisel and some sand paper fixed it. I'm willing to bet there is a better way to make this shape and if I ever need to make more I'll do some investigating.

Finishing is up next, and then figuring out how to make the panel.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Jim