Thanks for all the compliments. It is made completely from cherry, mostly wild cherry. The plan called for 2"x2" posts made from glued up stock. They offered two suggestions to glue up, the first choice was cut 4 pieces all with 45 degree edges and then glue them up. I had made post box bank just before this and I 45'd all the edges and I wasn't thrilled with how it looked. So I made the executive decision to purchase a 12/4 piece of cherry so that I didn't have to glue anything up and made the posts 2 1/2" x 2 1/2". It was an 8ft long piece and about 6" wide when I started and very very heavy, but in the end I think it was the right decision. Turns out it was the only piece of lumber I had to buy since just over a year ago I scored a large haul of wild cherry. Even though this board cost be $100, it was "technically" the only lumber I bought for this project
The spindles were not stubbed, the plan called for a creative solution here. They had you take a wider piece and cut dadoes every 3/4". Then you rip that into strips and place them into a dado in the header/footer. This leaves you with 3/4" x 3/4" "mortises" to receive the spindles. I thought this might look weird, but it's not an area of the piece you really look at so it was a good short cut. I did decide to glue each spindle in the place, as I was worried about rattling. This definitely made the glue up a challenge. I did M/T all the other pieces which was also a challenge due to their size.
As for the hardware, I bought the bed rail fasteners at Woodcraft and then I just bought 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" iron angle at Lowes to hold the wood stretchers for the mattress. I spray painted and clear coated the iron after pre-drilling counter sunk holes. I must say that besides applying the finish on projects, applying hardware is my most worrisome step. In this case, I initially purchased some screws from Lowes and then read on this forum about what others use. I ended up buying some stainless screws from McFeelys. I predrilled and used 2 1/2" screws into the endgrain of the rails. I of course manged to break one screw head off, so I had to fill the hole with a much shorter screw. My only compliant in the end was that the screw heads were ever so slightly larger than normal (which McFeelys advertised) and thus didn't completely fit in the counter sunk holes in the hardware. So when you put the two fasteners together, they aren't flush
As for the finish, I decided to go with just clear Watco wipe on poly. I was going to stain, but the lumber I used had amazing color, grain and other interesting features as you can see here:
and here:
There were also red streaks/spots in places (I evidently didn't take any photos of those), so I was afraid those would be lost/covered with anything besides a clear coat.
Since I'm a weekend warrior when it comes to this hobby, it took me 5-6 months to complete. I roughly spent ~100 hours of actual time working on this though. I have plans for the matching end tables and dresser, however those are on the back burner for now as I have found other ideas to keep me busy. Luckily this bed is for an guest bedroom so there is no pressure to make the rest of the pieces.... yet.
