Furniture Dreaming: The King Bed - stage 2 : base construction (day 1)

It easter, Yay a long weekend! Should be plenty of time to get things sorted and moving forward on a couple of projects. For me working in the workshop is my time to get away and chill out with God. With easter being a time to remember what Jesus did for us on the Cross - I'm getting loads of God time and plenty of opportunity to reflect.

I spent good Friday organsing the workshop and cleaning everything up nice and neat. I was receiving complaints about the car not being able to come inside at night so I've rearranged things to make sure that can happen. Since cleaning everything I've drawn up rough plans on the new workbench area I want to make, along with an allowance for the 3 axis CNC I'll be building soon (more on that another time).

[the clean and organised workshop]

[the proposed workshops layout including CNC location]

[everyone needs a shop dog]

With the workshop all clean and organised I decided to call it quits for the day and get ready to go visit some friends for a BBQ. The next morning (today) saw a sleepy start to the day followed by a trip to bunnings to get 40 meters of pine stud. Met a really interesting guy there that was into furniture making also and we got talking about wood CNC and various other things. A wealth of knowledge that I'll have to remember next time I'm there. It surprises me all the time how freely people give away information when you get chatting to them. I explain what it is I'm doing, mention my blog and voila! Instant tips, advice and all sorts of golden nuggets - including discounts. It amazing how much I keep getting blessed throughout this process.

In order to make sure each of the 4 legs were cut identically I set up a temporary jig on the saw horses. The idea being that the jig would hold all of the legs in place while I used the circular saw to cut out the notches for the main braces. The jig worked a treat, the only thing that was a little annoying was the legs not being cut square the first time around at the Big Red Shed.

Using the jig I made multiple passes with the circular to make 'fins' in the wood. Then with a simple tap of the hammer these snap off to reveal a surface that is traditionally cleaned up with chisels. Given that I already had the circular saw out I decided to use it to clean the surface. Totally not what the tool is designed to do but it worked, WELL!

Everything aside from the slats are now cut for the main part of the bed base and ready for drilling and bolting. I'll drill and dry fit tomorrow before heading out to a family BBQ and save the dressing and final assembly for monday. As usual here are a bunch of pictures to wet your appetite.