How I build the Custom Contemporary Arched Bed – Part 1

Let’s start with the legs.  As I said in a previous post, the legs of the headboard and footboard are ¾ round “posts”.  The top of the leg will be curved to match the arch in the panel running from leg to leg.  This picture shows a SketchUp rendition of one of the headboard legs and panels:

Here is the lumber for the four legs.  In order for me to be able to turn these legs round on a lathe, they need to be a solid square.  Three boards are grouped together for each leg.  The board on the bottom of the stacks is a little more than half the thickness of the finished leg and its width is a little more than the full thickness of the finished leg.  The remainder of each leg consists of two more square pieces.

One of the two square pieces will be permanently glued to the wide board, becoming part of the final leg, and the other will be temporarily glued in place, making up a full square ready for turning.  After turning the leg round I will remove that piece.  At this point I’ve been careful to orient all of my boards to give me the best looking leg possible in terms of grain and color.

Ok, so how am I going to “temporarily” glue a piece in place and then remove it leaving me a nice, clean, inside square area for my panels?  My method is this – all of these pieces of wood are cut longer than the finished leg; about 5 inches.  So for the temporary piece of wood, I am going to put glue on its last 2” of each end only.  It is the ends that are important for attaching the square to the lathe.  Once I finish turning the leg I will cut off each end past the glue area and the temporary piece will just fall out leaving me a clean interior square area.  The picture below illustrates how the boards will be glued together. (Click on the picture for a larger version.)

Before I can do any of the gluing I have one more thing to do.  The headboard and footboard panels ultimately need to be securely attached to these legs.  The strongest method is to use a mortise and tenon joint.  If I were to glue even the permanent boards together now I wouldn’t have access for my router to cut the mortise.  This is where some very precise layout occurs.  Remember that these boards are extra long.  The first thing I need to do is determine where the final top and bottom of the leg are going to be and mark that on my wood.  The next thing is to strike a line down the length of the wider board where the inside edge of the permanent square will be glued.  Now that I have those marks I can determine where the panel will be positioned and then mark out the mortise.  This result is shown below.  (Click on the picture for a larger version.)

Coming soon in Part 2 - Cutting the mortise, gluing up the pieces, mounting on the lathe and turning.

Thanks for viewing,

Sue