How I build the Custom Contemporary Arched Bed – Part 2

It's time to cut the mortises in the bed legs before I glue them up into squares suitable for turning.  I do this with my plunge router.  I'm making my mortises 1/2" wide.  I don't have a good 1/2" router bit so I used a 5/16" bit, made my first cuts on all of the legs, reset the fence and made a second pass resulting in a 1/2" wide by 1" deep mortise.

Ok, now I can begin to glue up the leg parts to make my turning blank.  I'm first going to glue on the piece that will be the permanent 3rd quarter of the leg.  I want to protect the areas that will ultimately be exposed from glue squeeze out.  So I turn to one of my best friends - packing tape!  I simply put a strip of tape on what will be the inside surfaces of the leg.

Now I'm ready to glue the 3rd quarter to the wide piece of the leg.  I am extremely careful to line up the edge of the 3rd quarter precisely down the line I struck on the wider board where the inside edges meet.  Below are the headboard legs in clamps.  (The fourth piece, which will be the final glue-up, is simply sitting on top at this point, paired with its mate.)

 After the clamps come off I'm ready to glue in the final piece which, again, is temporary and will be removed after turning.  Remember from part 1 I penciled in what will be the final top and bottom of the leg.  It is very important to transfer those lines to the outside of the boards - I need to keep track of those because they'll tell me where to make my cuts when the leg comes off the lathe.  Remember too that all of these boards are about 5" too long and I am only going to glue the last couple of inches on each end.  In order to get a nice tight glue joint I clamp corner to corner.

Now it's off to the lathe.  First I trimmed the ends flush so the blank will properly mount to the lathe:

Below is the leg all turned and sanded.  Prior to turning away my pencil line indicating the final top and bottom of the leg, I used my parting tool to cut a shallow groove which will act as my guide at the chop saw.

 After going to the chop saw, holding the leg tight against the fence and making slow, careful cuts the scrap piece of wood simply falls out and here's what I end up with:

The only thing left to do to this leg is to cut the top at an angle which will match the arch in the panel.

Next up in Part 3 - Making the headboard and footboard panels.

Thanks for reading,

Sue