[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] Building a large piece of furniture like this bed can be a pretty impressive feat of construction.

So on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're gonna walk through the steps of making a platform bed like this.

And what you'll end up seeing is that the process is really easy to do and really accessible in just about any size workshop.

Let's build!

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ In this episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're featuring this striking platform bed.

Now, originally this bed was featured in the pages of Woodsmith magazine some years ago, and that bed was made of cherry and featured a wonderful two-tone finish.

It was a great-looking piece, but we decided to do something a little different.

We wanted a bed that was a little more modern, a little more contemporary.

So instead of cherry, we chose to use ash.

Now, ash has a very striking, prominent, distinct grain.

And to make use of that prominent, distinct grain, we chose to use Carbon Black stain.

And I think you'll agree it's a very striking finish.

The bed itself is easy to build, but it's strong.

Features mortise and tenon joinery.

And look at the size of these components -- heavy rails, large posts.

Now, if you ever need to move this bed, you'll love the fact that it's held together with heavy steel knockdown fasteners.

So it goes together easily and is solid.

If you're interested in this great project, you'll find it on our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

The first part of the bed that we're gonna make is the headboard assembly, and it's frankly the most complicated part of the bed, and what makes it so is just all the pieces that are coming together.

And that's what I have laid out here on the workbench.

What we have are the two main headboard legs or posts.

And in order to get material this size -- it's about 3 inches square -- we had to glue up two thicker pieces of material.

Then we have these longer, thinner pieces but still pretty hefty that are the long rails that will span between the two posts.

So there's two wider ones here that will be the two lower rails and then a narrower upper rail.

Joining those together are a pair of intermediate stiles that will get set in place, and those will form the framework around the three plywood panels.

So since we have all of our pieces cut to size, the next step is to get started on the joinery.

And for that, we're gonna head over to the router table.

The pieces for the headboard are all joined together with mortise and tenon joints.

Now, the starting point is to rout some grooves.

That varies a little bit from the plans that you're gonna find there at WoodsmithShop.com.

There they're talking about making the mortises first and then locating the grooves.

But I find that it's actually easier to start with the grooves and use that for locating the mortises.

And that's gonna get into a little bit of process here, because those grooves are sized to match the plywood.

Now, the thing about plywood is that it often doesn't really match the stated thickness.

So for 3/4-inch plywood like we're using here, it's usually gonna be a little bit less.

But you want to measure it to be certain.

Our plywood actually does, shockingly, measure 3/4 of an inch.

So I'm gonna make the grooves with a 3/4-inch bit.

If yours is a little smaller or thinner, there are special plywood bits that are slightly undersized by just a fraction of an inch in order to make that fit.

So what I've done here is to set up the bit and the fence so that the grooves are gonna be centered on the thickness of those posts, then I've made a couple of marks on the router table and some more on the workpiece itself to show me where I'm gonna stop those grooves.

So then it's just a matter of making a pass at one depth and then raising the bit for the second pass to cut the groove to its final depth.

With the grooves routed on the inside face of the post, what we can do now is use those grooves at the drill press while we're trying to create the mortises.

Now, the groove helps me to align the fence so that the bit is perfectly centered in that groove.

Now, when you're working with a Forstner bit, it allows you to drill overlapping holes.

That's gonna allow you to get more of the waste out.

You'll still be left with the rounded ends on the mortise and some little nubs of waste along the side.

The second part of forming the mortises and the posts is to clean up the remaining waste.

And I'll do that with a couple of chisels here.

You can see what I was talking about early on back at the drill press with these little wedges or nubs of waste that are left over.

Now, here again is where that routed groove can help out, because now you have a nice flat wall to register a chisel against.

You just tap your way straight down.

So you do that on both of the long edges of the mortise, then at the ends of the mortise where the bit left a rounded end, I'm gonna switch to a narrower chisel.

And I have one here that's just a little narrower than the width of the groove.

And I'll start by going back and forth from the side... ...and the end of the mortise... ...to square up the ends.

There are really two steps that we need to take for the long rails and then the two intermediate stiles on the headboard.

The first is to cut a groove on those, and that groove has to fit the size of our plywood.

In order to make that cut, I've installed a dado blade in the table saw that's slightly narrower than the overall size that I'm looking for.

The reason for this is twofold.

The first is that I can use a narrower dado blade to make sure that the groove is gonna be perfectly centered on my pieces.

I'll make a pass with one face registered against the rip fence, then flip it around and make a second pass using the other face.

That centers the groove.

There are two types of tenons that we're gonna be cutting on the pieces for the headboards, and I'm gonna start with the smallest and work up to the longest.

Now, those small ones are on the ends of these intermediate stiles that divide the plywood panels.

Now, these only need to be long enough to fill the groove that we cut on the long rails.

So I have a wide dado blade installed.

Then to set the length of the tenon, I'm using a stop block.

Here it's just a hand screw attached to the auxiliary fence on the miter gauge.

That means that when I go to cut my stub tenons, as I cut both faces on each end, they're all gonna be consistent.

The process for cutting the longer tenons on the ends of the rails isn't much different.

Still using a dado blade, still using a miter gauge to control the workpiece.

But there are a couple of issues we need to address.

The first is that these rails, being so long, are a little tippy.

Now, to control that, I've clamped a support bar to the miter gauge fence.

That way I can tuck it under that bar, and it's gonna give me a lot more control so that I can just concentrate on making the tenon.

To set the length of the tenon, I'm using the rip fence as an end stop.

And as you can see, I'll need to make it in two passes.

I'll start with the shoulder cut, then slide the workpiece out a little bit to complete the tenon on this face.

I'll repeat the process on the opposite face.

Finally, when I'm done, I need to remove the support bar so that I can flip the rail on edge to trim the bottom shoulder.

Assembling a big project like this headboard requires a little bit of planning and some good execution.

So let's start with the planning.

The first thing to do is to test-fit all of the joints together to make sure that those mortises are gonna fit into the tenons, that the panels and stiles will fit into the grooves.

You can do that individually.

And then it's always a good idea to do a dry assembly, bring everything together without glue just to make sure everything fits just right.

Then when it comes to the final assembly, since there are so many pieces that are coming together pretty much all at the same time, you want to have a plan of action.

So I started by setting one of the long posts on the floor.

Then I took the top rail, added glue to the tenon and the groove, and was able to slip that into the mortise at the top of the post.

From there, I just worked my way from one side of the headboard to the other, adding one of the plywood panels into the groove in the post and the top rail, then adding one of the intermediate stiles and then the middle panel, followed by the remaining stile and panel.

From there, you can apply glue to the middle rail and tip that into the middle mortise on the post and then bring it together, fitting all of the panels and stiles into the groove.

Finally, the lower rail is pretty easy since nothing else has to fit into it.

It's just a matter of dropping the tenon right into the mortise.

To wrap things up here on the headboard, I'm gonna attach a long, flat cap piece to the top of the headboard.

It serves as a little bit of a punctuation to finish off the headboard.

And the real trick here, though, is getting it aligned so that it's centered end to end and front to back.

Now, the solution for that... is to use some dowels that are installed in the ends of the posts and then into matching holes in the cap piece.

Now, the key, though, is making sure that those holes are perfectly aligned.

To do that, I started by drilling the holes in the posts.

Then I used a set of metal dowel centers that can drop right into those holes.

With a dowel center in each one of the holes, I can bring the cap piece into place, take the time to get it centered, and then just with a tap of a mallet, I'll create dimples on the underside of the cap that I can use to drill the holes for the dowels.

So then to install it, drive the dowel into the leg.

Then the piece is indexed, so I can apply a bead of glue between the cap and the top rail and this thing will be ready, and I can pass this off to Logan to work on the rails and the footboard.

So now that Phil has the headboard of our bed done, we can go ahead and concentrate on the other parts, and those parts are gonna be the rails and the footboard.

We're gonna start with the footboard first.

Now, after building the headboard, this is gonna be pretty simple.

And the parts we have here are two posts that are gonna act like the legs, then we have the rail.

These are all gonna be connected together with mortise and tenon, much like the headboard.

So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna cut the mortises in the posts.

And instead of doing that at the drill press like Phil did, I'm gonna go ahead and grab our mortising machine and cut them like that.

Alright, so the mortises for our posts are pretty long, about 3/4 inches wide, and they're pretty deep.

That's the main reason I'm gonna use the mortising machine.

Now, I like the mortising machine because it combines both the drilling action and chiseling action all in one.

There's a drill bit on the inside, and it's basically housed inside of a square chisel.

So every time you pull the lever down, you're getting the drilling action plus the chiseling action.

Now, I'm gonna go ahead and use a 1/2-inch bit here.

This mortise is 3/4 inches wide, like I mentioned.

So I'll make a pass down one edge, then I'll move the table back a little bit, make a pass the rest of the way to make it full width.

Once I have the mortises done on both legs, we'll head over to the bench and cut the tenons on the stretcher.

[ Saw whirring ] Alright, now, with the mortises cut, I went ahead and cut the tenons, and I cut the two cheeks on the table saw, similar to how Phil did.

Now, instead of flipping it up on edge and cutting the shoulders, I prefer to cut these by hand.

So I simply scribe a line all the way around where my shoulder's gonna be, then I use a handsaw.

I cut right down to my line.

Now, instead of coming in and cutting the top of the shoulder off, because this is a straight-grain ash, it splits really nicely.

So I can use a wide chisel on the line.

Then just give it a good tap.

It pops right out.

So I'm gonna grab my block plane, clean up these faces, get everything to fit, and glue it up.

Alright, so, I have the footboard all clamped up.

There's one thing I did before I clamped everything together, and that was cut a chamfer on the bottom and top edge of the posts.

The chamfer's pretty important.

It keeps it from chipping during everyday use.

There's one other thing on the plans that I just kind of chose to ignore because I think it looks good like this, and that was a shallow curve on the bottom side of the stretcher.

Now, everything on this bed's pretty linear.

And I thought it looked really good without the curve, so I just didn't cut it.

But you can cut it if you decide to.

So now that this is in clamps, I'm gonna go ahead and set if off to the side, grab our rails, and we'll talk about installing the bed-rail hardware.

Okay, now, one of the features that, in my opinion, you really want in a bed that you're building is the ability to take it apart and move it.

Now, that's done with different sets of bed hardware fasteners.

And I've used a bunch of different sets in different beds I've built, ranging from cross dowels with bolts to dowels to these guys.

And these ones happen to be my favorite.

And these are mortised-in bed-rail hooks, and they work by two parts.

The first is this female plate.

This female plate gets mortised in into the headboard and the footboard on the bed.

And then we have the male hook portion.

This gets mortised into the rails, and you can kind of see where I'm going with this.

Once these are both installed, the rails will slide in and down and lock everything together.

So this all starts out really by laying out the mortise locations, and I've done that on one of the rails here.

Now, routing and mortising the end of a long rail can be a little difficult.

But I've found if you clamp it in your vise kind of at an angle and use a spacer to keep your vise from racking, it puts it in a pretty good position to use a router on, okay?

I have a template here that is sized to match these plates.

And we're gonna clamp that in place over our mortise location.

Alright, now I'm gonna come back with a small, compact trim router, and I've installed a dado cleanout bit in here, and I've set the depth so when I'm at maximum depth, it's cutting the correct thickness for these different plates.

So I'm gonna go get my safety glasses on, rout these, and then we'll take a look at the headboard.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, so, as you can see, I've started routing the mortises on the headboard.

Now, this is done using the same template that I used on the ends of the rails.

I just removed that cleat and then used some double-sided tape to hold it in position and then routed it out.

Now we can check and see how the female portion fits.

And it looks pretty good.

Now, there are a couple things on both the male and female portion that you need to watch out for as you install them.

On the male portion, there's a pair of nubs on the back.

It's where those hooks protrude through the plate.

So what I do is I put those in place on the ends of the rails, tap them with a hammer to mark the location.

Then I just drill that out with an oversized drill bit just to give a little bit of clearance.

Then you can install them with screws.

The difference on the female plate is going to be we need to create a clearance for those hooks to go through and then slide down.

So I'm gonna position this one in its mortise, then I'm gonna use a pencil and just mark the location.

Okay, there we go.

We have those two locations marked.

Now, the hooks slide down a little bit further, so I'll go maybe 1/2 inch below each of those.

There we go.

Now, you could drill these out, and that's perfectly viable, but if I can, I like to use hand tools.

So I'm gonna grab a big old mortise chisel.

And this is just a chisel.

It's a little bit heavier and thicker than a standard chisel.

And this is really a tool that's made for chopping.

So I can just line it up with the start, give it a good whack.

And then I'm just gonna walk it about maybe 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch each time.

And I'm just gonna keep walking it down till I reach the end of the mortise.

And about every third hit or so...

I'll grab it and just lever it to me.

That pops out all that waste that I just chopped.

So let me go and get through all of these mortises, and then we'll install it.

Alright, there we go.

So now we have the plates installed on the headboard, I'm gonna go ahead and install them on the footboard, then we can get this bed put together and see how she looks.

Alright, so once we have the female plates installed in the footboard, we can put it all together, and this is what we're left with, and it looks great.

There is one other thing to take care of, though, and that's to install the four cleats around the inside of the bed.

So there's one on the headboard, the footboard, and both rails.

And those cleats are to support either a platform, which could be out of plywood, or slats, which is what my preference is.

But once it's all assembled, those cleats are installed with glue and some screws to hold it while the glue dries, it's ready for finishing.

But for that, I'm gonna hand that off to Chris.

Phil and Logan have done an awesome job getting this platform bed built.

Now it's my job to get it sanded smooth and ready for finishing.

The first thing I'm gonna do is tackle the glue squeeze-out that you'll see here on some of the joints.

To get rid of that glue, I'm gonna use a sharp chisel and pare it away.

Once the glue is gone, my next step is to start easing all of these sharp edges.

Now, to consistently ease all the edges, I want to use a sanding block, and I really like these cork blocks.

When the sanding starts on all the flat surfaces, I'm going to want to use three grits -- 120, 180, and finish with 220.

It's very important that every surface gets sanded with each individual grit because what we're after is consistency.

If we consistently sand everything to 220, it's really gonna help out when I apply the stain that we get a consistent, even absorption of the stain.

To help matters out in the large flat areas, I'm going to employ this little random orbital sander, and I have all the grits needed to go through 120, 180, and 220 with that.

So there we go.

One other little item that I'll point out is that we have a lot of tough little areas to get into, little corners and edges of the rails and stiles.

So I have a piece of hardwood here, and I've cut my sandpaper crisply along one edge.

And that allows this face to rub against the -- against this panel and the sandpaper against that edge.

And I can do that even here on the top and bottom of these rails and not leave sanding scratches across my panel.

It'll also help me get into these tight little corners.

So it's definitely a process in which it's gonna take a little bit of time and I need to be patient about.

So I'm gonna get busy and get this sanded so we can start staining.

Well, now I've got the back side of the headboard stained, and it's time for me to stain the front.

What I'm using is a gel stain.

It's called Carbon Black.

If you haven't used a gel stain before, they're very interesting.

You can see that the consistency is a little bit like pudding, and certainly they handle very differently than other types of stain.

With a conventional oil stain, I would flood an area and then wipe it all off with a rag, but with the gel stain, I'm going to go ahead and apply a nice even coat, not applying too much, but making sure I have good coverage.

And then when I get everything done, I can come back and start to pull some of that gel stain off with a different foam brush.

And I can begin to blend a little bit.

What I like about this gel stain is it allows me to create an effect, essentially a glazed effect, where corners and edges are dark and then things lighten up a little bit on the main field areas.

I think it's gonna be very attractive.

♪♪ ♪♪ Building a bed like this one presents some interesting challenges for woodworking.

You want the finished bed to be sturdy, but it also needs to come apart for rearranging a room or for moving.

So on today's episode, I hope you were able to see that balance in play, where we built a really rock-solid headboard and footboard and then used some really ingenious hardware to be able to connect all the pieces together simply but solidly.

If you'd like to see more information about the projects from "The Woodsmith Shop" TV shows, it's all at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's also your home for other videos and plans, and we hope to see you here next time in the woodsmith shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free "Woodsmith" book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪