I promised my wife Linda that I’d complete a king-size bed for Andy’s room before Andy and Lauren arrived home for Christmas. This was an interesting project. The idea was to make a mortise and tenon bed frame to support a plywood platform and memory-foam mattress – with fabulous stacked spherical posts. The spheres would be laminated plywood rings, turned round on the lathe and threaded onto 3/4 inch all-thread rod. Worked out well! Thanks to my intern, Madeline Cass, for assisting with priming, transportation, and assembly!
cutting baltic birch plywood rings for the various sized balls
each ring has holes for dowel pins - two for the ring below, two for the ring above
the parts for the spheres stack up pretty fast
rings for a sphere laid out
dowel pins get glued in
rings stack up to make rough sphere shapes
clamping the glued-up rings to set
glued-up rough spheres
glued-up rough sphere mounted in lathe
At first I used a grinder to turn the spheres round and smooth - after a short while of this, I found it was much faster and easier to just use a conventional scraper tool - that way I could turn each sphere in just a few minutes
lots of turned balls - those still need end caps removed and rounded
drywall mud filled the chips and was SO easy to sand smooth in the lathe
the finished balls were gessoed, painted with carbon black acrylic, then satin lacquered
stringing balls on all-thread -- looks like everything's gonna fit
building the poplar rails joined into rectangular solid baltic birch plywood - rails have tenons, plywood is mortised.
bed is complete - plywood platform and mattress still need to be placed