Making Stuff from Wood

A cleaned out mortise.

For the past while I've been assembling the tools and materials to build a bed frame.  I've got a bunch of poplar wood and I'm using blind mortise-and-tenon joins for the head/foot baords.  The side rails will be held in place by some bed hook hardware (from Lee Valley) that will allow it to be disassembled easily for moving.

Our current bed is an old box spring and mattress that is more-or-less bowl shaped and provides lots of sleep exercise in the form of clinging to the edges of the mattress to keep from falling into the bowl.  I prefer a platform bed with slats supporting the mattress, it's firmer than a box spring and supports the mattress better.  Most box springs seem to break down after a while and slouch to one side or turn bowl-shaped.

So far I've got the wood for the footboard cut, jointed and assembled (not glued yet.)  The posts for the headboard "on the bench" waiting to have the waste wood cleared out of the mortises.  The shoulders for the headboard rail tenons are cut, but I'm waiting until the mortises are finished before I pare them down to size for gluing.

I find woodworking with simple hand tools immensely satisfying.  It probably comes from the same place as my love of mechanical watches, fountain pens, cooking from scratch, and drawing come from.  I haven't drawn anything in a long time, but I'd like to get back into it.

I'll post some pictures of the bed when it's finished.  Probably in a week or two.