Bunk Beds - Take Two

As regular readers will know, I recently posted an article on building a set of bunk beds for our small cabin.  We wanted to be able to accommodate four people staying in the cabin overnight, so we needed a second set.  Given the small size of the cabin, the second set would need some small design changes to fit in the space remaining.  I took my first sketchup model and basically trimmed it down where I could.

Since I already covered the build details on the first bed in full in my previous article, I'm going to just focus on the things I did differently for the second set.

There were a few differences in terms of length.  I made the long and short rails a bit shorter, and the posts just a bit taller.  I also thinned the posts down from about 3 1/2 inches square to 2 3/4 inches square.  Once that was done, it made all the "2 by" material that the rails are made out of look a bit too beefy, so I thinned them down to 1 1/4 inches thick.  I correspondingly adjusted the mortise and tenon widths down by the same 1/4 inch to 3/4 of an inch.

The biggest design change I made on the second set of beds was to replace the draw bolt joinery on the disassemble-able joints between the long rails and the end ladder assemblies with bedlocks I bought from Lee Valley.

All my rails and posts were prepared and the mortise and tenon joints cut in the same manner as the first bed, the main difference being that there are no mortise and tenons connecting the long rails to the end ladder assemblies.  Here is how I installed the bedlocks that replaced them:

I started by making layout marks with a marking gauge on the end of a long rail for the mortise to hold the male (hooked) section of the bedlock.

 

I deepened my marks a bit with a knife, being careful to stay on the line.

I then clamped some scrap to the sides to provide a wider base for my router base to ride on.

I set the depth of my router bit's cut to the thickness of the bedlock, then carefully freehand routed away the waste.

The deep knife lines I made allowed this to work well.  As you approach the knife line slowly and carefully with the router, the guide line encourages the wood to the waste side to sheer off, and the wood on the keep side of the line to stay put.

I squared up the ends with my chisel and mallet, bevel down.

I was very happy with the finished product.

Then the bedlocks are screwed in place with some good quality 2 1/2 inch long wood screws.

 Installing the female piece of the bedlock in the post begins in the same way, with the marking gauge and knife.

I then use my router freehand to remove most of the waste.

I square up the corners this time with my router plane.

The main body of the female section of the bedlock sits in a mortise, but it also requires two additional mortises for the hooks to slip into when the joint is assembled.  I mark these by placing the bedlock in its mortise and tracing the locations for the hook mortises.

 

Since these mortises were small, I decided to chop them out with a chisel and mallet.

They're not super clean, but it hardly matters as long as they function.

The new bed is the one on the right in these pictures

Overall, I am happy with the new design.  The slightly smaller dimensions on the pieces made the bed lighter and easier to transport.  Also, the bedlocks worked out well.  They didn't save me any money,  nor time to install them, but when it came time to finally assemble the whole bed they really made it easier.  If I had to make another set, I would definitely go with the bedlocks just for the easier assembly.  Trying to align all those drawbolted mortise and tenons on final assembly on the older set is really a chore.

Tails and Pins (Odds and Ends)

I have been making several hand cut dovetailed items over the past couple of months.  First, some small shelves for the cabin:

These are meant to hang under an existing shelf and attach to wooden shelf brackets like this:

I also made 3 storage boxes from plywood to haul necessities back and forth to the cabin in:

I don't know about you, but I never seem to have enough places to put hardware.  So I made these two little screw caddies:

And here is my first attempt at half-blind dovetails on an upcoming project - a bookcase for the cabin.

For the cabin bookcase glue up, I had to have 3 new clamps.  So I made a funky little clamp rack to store them on that fit into the little bit of space I had left.  It attaches to the wooden shelf brackets with the screws you can see in the front, as well as two more pocket hole screws in the rear.

Also on the shop organization and storage front, I cleaned up a really messy corner where I had been stockpiling metal.  Or at least that was the original idea, but lots of wood ended up in the pile as well so I was guaranteed to never be able to find what I needed in there.  So I set up this little system for storing and organizing the metal.  It's just a little box made from scrap spruce, joined with rabbets and brads at the corners.  There are removable 1/4 inch plywood dividers installed in dadoes.  The upper divider is just a 2 x 4 ripped in half with some holes drilled in it to match the dividers in the lower box.  Dowels are inserted in the holes to correspond to the divider settings in the lower unit.

The wood and other junk that was in the pile was sorted, and some thrown away.  I installed a small shelf on a the bottom section of my lumber rack, as seen in this picture, to hold short stock I'm saving.  You can see the upper section is still in major need of some cleanup.