Pencil Post Bed - Day 1

The pencil post bed that I'll be building is a design by Lonnie Bird as described in Fine WoodWorking magazine article "Build a Pencil-Post Bed".

The image to the right shows the rough boards that will make up the bulk of the bed. The three 12/4 boards will form the four posts and the 2 long rails and 2 short rails. The two 8/4 boards will be used for the headboard and the tester frame. The extra 12/4 stock will be set aside for future projects.

The final dimensions of the posts will be 2 1/2" square. The rails will be 3 1/2" wide by 2 1/4" thick. I had hoped to get all four posts out of the 10' board. Unfortunately after closer examination, I found a loose knot really put a kink in that idea. I drew out a pattern of one post to see how the knot would affect the post. I had hoped it would fall into the waste but alas it was going to jut into a section of the top section of the post. Since I could potentially get an additional post out of one of the two 8' without severe negative  consequences I decided to the affected post aside.

I had to get out my finest woodworking tools to make the intial length cuts on the 12/4 stock. I'm certain Husquvarna is known for their fine woodworking tools.

My old 8" Delta Homecraft tablesaw from the 1950's is just not capable of coming close to being able to rip these boards to width so I'll need to use my 14" bandsaw. Before I could rip them I wanted to make sure that at least one edge of each board was straight. We managed to resolve that issue by using my Craftsman 6" jointer from the 1960's. I have to admit that the old jointer handled the heavy load flawlessly. The fence on the jointer can be a bit "weak" and flexes a bit if you are pushing a piece of wood against it and it can be a bit of pain to get square. But once it is set it tends to stay in good alignment.

Once one side was straightened with jointer, it was a fairly simple task to rip the boards to width on the bandsaw. I'm using a 1/2" 3TPI Timberwolf blade to do the ripping. The Timberwolf blades are awesome I can cut a ton of wood before the blade begins to dull. When I first bought the bandsaw I was expecting to use it primarily for cutting curves but to be honest I use it almost weekly for resawing lumber or ripping larger stock like this.

By the end of Saturday I had completed ripping all the 12/4 stock, jointing two sides square and rough planed the boards for the headboard to about 7/8" thick. I plan to do the final planing on Monday  and hopefully get the headboard glued up. There is one small knot in the headboard as visible just below the tape measure. Some of it will plane out. It will add a bit of character I guess. Cutting the posts revealed a lot of small pin knots that weren't visible on the outside of the board. Guess that can be expected when dealing with such thick boards.

Looks like I'll have to make a trip to Richmond tomorrow morning to get a new 45 degree chamfer bit to put the chamfer on the octagonal posts. While I'm there hopefully I can get the bed bolts. I'm trying to get a really good start on the bed over this President's Day weekend. Depending on how things go tomorrow I'll have a better idea of how many weeks it will take to get it to completion.