There’s always something beautiful being created in artisan Steve Crook’s Florida woodworking shop. Here’s the latest custom furniture project showing the initial stages of a new, custom furniture bed project for a brand new client.
STEVE: “I personally milled the locally harvested oak wood in my new sawmill needed to build the headboard and footboard for a customer’s new custom bed.”
- The first step in the process was to mill the arch-top of the headboard and footboard to the designed radius. the parallel cuts on the arch-top were made with a track saw and joined first at the center with custom oak spline. The center cherry panel was made with ship lapped panels cut to the angle of the arched top panel and flat on the bottom.
- Next the baseplate was cut to the same length, both mortised with dados to accept the panel. The picture here shows the footboard in an intermediate stage of this woodworking project, ready for posts.
The four by four posts being milled and cut to approximate length were milled to accept the custom spline and the protrusion of the panel. All the components have been prefinished with shellac using the French method. (more on that later) After chamfering the tops of the posts and checking everything on the layout table, the parts are ready to be assembled. Once assembled with glue and clamped, they become an ‘Assembly’ which is stronger than the sum total of all the pieces individually. They are now dry-fit and ready to glue and clamp.
When ready for finishing I’ll be using a traditional French method for achieving a superior finish. Having used the French finishing method before on past projects gives me every confidence that it will look fabulous when this custom furniture project is ready to deliver to my client.
Wow, this already looks like it’s going to be an outstanding piece, Steve!