Pencil Post Bed - Final Pieces

With the finish applied to the bed, it's time to take care of those last few pieces to complete the bed. Chandra picked up two pieces of 1" angle iron for me from a welding shop in Charlottesville on Friday that screw into the side rails and hold the slats that go across the bed under the mattress. On Saturday morning I picked up some poplar boards from Northland Forest Products in Troy to make the slats for under the mattress. On Saturday aft, we drove into Charlottesville and bought a mattress for the bed. The remainder of Saturday saw me cutting the 4 poplar boards into 20 slats (4 slats I derived from other poplar boards I had on hand).

Mattheus helped me crosscut and rip the boards to rough size. I jointed one flat face and then jointed one side. Then Johannes helped me plane them to final thickness. I have to admit the new dust collector made a huge difference in the amount of mess planing made. I believe the planer works much much better now that it doesn't have to try and push the wood chips out. There were many times that it seemed like we needed to almost push a board through the thing and now it planes without any issues - walnut, poplar and a bit of oak. Thus tool performance has been increased by the dust collector - and cleanup is a breeze.

I used a 3/16" round over bit on all edges of the slats so that there was nothing to catch on the mattress. Wrapped that up around 11:15pm on Saturday night.

I had to drill the screw holes into the angle iron - 12" on center and countersink for woodscrew heads. Chandra was a bit worried or upset. Having never bought steel before she was a little concerned over the surface rust and scale on the material but I assured her that it would clean up fine. To make sure I used 50gt sanding disks on my 4-1/2" angle grinder and cleaned up all the rust and scale and rounded over any sharp corners. We hung em from the garage door track again and gave them a coat of primer - grey Rustoleom and two coats of black paint. I had to space things out a little longer today because the weather would be sunshine one minute and thunderstorm the next. So the humidity was high and the paint/primer was a little slower drying. I needed it done today to give it a good 48hrs of dry time before we had to assemble the bed.

If I understand correctly my dad and step mother will be arriving sometime on Wednesday. I think I can confidently say that they will now have a bed to sleep on. However, my wife is furiously trying to finish up the quilt for the bed. So while they have a bed to sleep on, they might have to wait a few days for the coverings.

I'll post a picture of the bed setup sometime later this week if all goes well.