First, I've gotta say WOW. How did I not know about shop class when I was in high school??? So many tools, nice layout, powerful drill press. I should have taken photos but I was busy drilling. Oh yeah. I have a serious crush on that drill press. My friend's drill press stalled out if the bit grabbed too much material, so I was producing a lot of sawdust as I slowly drilled my holes. THIS drill press CHEWED through the wood, producing chunky shavings and drilling deep holes in about 60 seconds!!! Yummy.
Anyhow, my original bed plan had the poles going into my 4x4 legs on the same level. The problem with that is that a 4x4 is really only 3.5x3.5. If you draw a little picture, you'll see that if you're drilling 2 inch wide holes, there's only enough room for the holes to be 1 inch deep (even drilling wide of center). So the poles weren't set very deeply into the legs, which contributed to the wobbliness. Also, since the poles were all on the same plane, that allowed the bed to wiggle a lot. Lastly, I'd overestimated how tall I wanted the beds. The extra height was unnecessary and adding to the problem. My solution: cut off 6 inches from the tops of my leg posts (thus removing my old holes) and redrill holes which vertically offset the head/foot and side poles. That way I could drill much deeper holes without worrying about them running into each other. I decided to lower the head and foot, because in the old design the head and foot ended up much higher than the middle due to sag. I figured this would help counteract that, since there was a limited amount of sag the higher sides would allow. (Important to me since I like to sleep on my tummy and there's a limit to how much my back likes to bend that way!)
So the shop teacher used his chop saw to shorten my 4x4s and I got to drill lots of holes :) You know what? It worked!!! My beds are now much sturdier, and don't have that annoying high head & foot feeling. The legs tend to spay out just a little, which is a good thing as far as stability is concerned, though it does look a little sloppy ;)
I've written up walkthroughs for anyone interested in making their own rope bed or straw mattress.
7 comments:
If you add a second set of bars below the others, gluing or screwing them for added support, you should eliminate the sprawl and the wiggle.
The problem with having the dowels offset as you now do it is that there is torque on the legs (work through the physics--where the tension produces forces), so the bed has some tendency to twist, not noticeable when on the ground but sometimes when you are carrying it. That was my experience with the first (child sized) beds of this design I made. One solution is to use thicker legs. Another is to have one dowel, tapered, go through the other inside the leg.
You can see pictures of this design at:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/StarvingStudent/Starving%20Student%20Articles/RopeBed.
pdf
Also of my "starving student" (low cost) version, using 2x4's instead of dowels.
What did you use for the head foot and side rails?
Where is the "how to" part?
Very hard aaaaaaah😟
Thank you for the tutorial! I would love to try this, but without a full on lacing diagram, with arrows and steps with where to start, where you go next, etc., it’s not going to happen. I studied your picture and just got overwhelmed with confusion. I’m very visual, so something like the fisherman’s knot illustration would be perfect for me, but it wouldn’t need to be that detailed. Is there somewhere I can find a diagram, please? Thank you!
Thanks for information.
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