The Woodshop Shed

Shaker Moon Bed

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


A few years ago, I spotted this Shaker Moon Bed made by Vermont Wood studios. I knew I wanted to make one some day.
When we moved to Georgia 20 months ago, I had my chance. I started by making a Sketchup model. I used this to my dimensions. I was very concerned about how to build a platform bed that had this simple Shaker look, so I oversized all the parts. The headboard and footboard are 1” thick, the side rails are 1 1/4” thick, and the legs are 2 1/2 square.
I really liked the look in Cherry, but the rest of our bedroom is Mahogany, so I had to go that way. Genuine Mahogany is really expense, and I don't like to work with the so-called African Magogany. I learned that Sweetwater lumber in Austell carries a boatload of of Sapele. While most of their Sapele is quartersawn (ribbon), they carry a fair amount that is flat sawn. Flat sawn Sapele looks pretty dang close to mahogany. I wanted 8/4 for my oversized parts, and all they had in stock of 8/4 flat sawn was in 16' lengths. I took my new cordless circular saw with me and ended up transportable boards. It was expensive, but about 50% of the cost of real mahogany.
In fairly short order I had the head and foot boards planed and glued up. I made the legs out of two pieces, picking out rigt sawn sections of boards. I laid out and then cut several mortises in the legs using a router and a 3/4” bit.
I usually taper legs with the jointer method, but these legs were so heavy and the taper so short that I knew that would not work well at all, so I tapered the legs with my hand plane.
I laid out the curve naturally with a center pivot stop and anchored at both ends. I made a template and cleaned up the jig saw cut wit the rother.
For the tenons on the head and foot boards, I established the shoulders with the router, cut our the sides of the tenons with a hand saw, and then sized the tenons with a shoulder plane, cleaning up with chisels.
When cleaning up the curve on the footboard, something went wrong with the template leading to a 1/8” gouge. A sharp spokeshave to the rescue.
I had chosed to use bed bolts to hold the bed together. I was pretty nervous about drilling these out, but it torned out that my best jig was the leg itself. I drilled the access holes on the side rails oversized, because I knew I would be precise enough for a close fitting hole. I was quite surprised to see how well they turned out:

The biggest engineering question was how to make a platform bed where the slats didn't have center support but wouldn't bend unnecessarily. I bought SYP floor joists, planed them down to 1 1/4”, and then glued/screwed a 1 1/4” square strip in the bottom, forming a T. I dovetailed the ends with corresponding mortises (?) attached to the rails. I cannot believe how strong these are. They're mounted 2” apart to allow the mattress to breath at least a little.
I assembled it in our den and fitted the supports to the slats. I simply could not believe it all worked!
Sapele is an open pore wood, and I didn't want to mess with something like Timbermate all over this thing. I decided to use the finishing method of using Danish Oil where you wet sand it to fill the pores. This is a great finishing method for an ultra smooth finish without a lot of fuss. I didn't want it too red, so I used one coat of red magoany, a 2nd coat of original, and a then a third coat of red again to get it to my ideal color. I have no idea if I could have changed this order up a bit, but when I it worked, I stayed with it.Here's the assembled bed in the bedroom.
I did not want to use brass bed bolts on a Shaker bed. In surfing the web, I read somewhere about someone suggesting using wood covers with rare earth magnets. This is a great solution.
It took about a week short of a year, with other commitments and projects in the midst, but we're pretty happy.

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