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From Woodsmith magazineAll rights reserved

page 1 of 12 ©2005 August Home PublishingOne copy for personal use. Other copies prohibited.

Plans N O Ww w w . p l a n s n o w . c o m

®

PLATFORM BED

Here’s a project I’ve been lookingforward to building for some time.This queen-size bed completes thefive-piece bedroom suite thatincludes an armoire, dresser, nightstand, and wall mirror. (To see allof these projects together, check outthe photo on page 12.)

To match the contemporary lookof the other pieces, we decided to

build a platform-style bed. Withthis type of design, no box spring isneeded. So you end up with a sleek,low-profile bed. But best of all, theclean, simple design makesbuilding a large project like thisvery straightforward.

For starters, the headboard andfootboard are both put togetherwith basic mortise and tenon

joinery. Nothing fancy or trickyhere. All you have to do is chop afew mortises, cut some tenons tofit, and you’re almost done. Andthe panels in headboard simplyslide into grooves cut into the framepieces. To complete the job, you justcut a couple of rails, install somesimple hardware, and the bed isready to assemble.

low-profile

This project combines the best of both worlds — a modern, elegant design withbasic, traditional joinery. Simple techniques make it easy.



Fastenermortisedinto leg

Headboard and footboardassembled with mortise

and tenon joinery

Footboard legsare chamferedon bottom andtop edges

Gentle curve onfootboard rail

Leg blanks gluedup from two

pieces of stock

Cap hides joineryat top of headboard

Cap doweledto legs

Bed rail fastenermortised into

end of side rail

Cleatsare glued

and screwedto rails

Sturdy plywoodplatform supports

mattress

NOTE: Bed railfasteners allow frameto be easily assembledor disassembled

NOTE: Bed is sized fora queen-size mattress

OVERALL DIMENSIONS: 68”W x 86!/2”L x 44"H



building a sturdy HEADBOARDOn this project, I decided to get themost involved work out of the wayfirst. That means I started by put-ting together the headboard.

LOOK IT OVER. Take a look at thedrawing above and you’ll get agood idea of how the headboard isput together. You’ll see that it’s reallynothing more than a large, mortiseand tenon frame.

You start with two sturdy legs andjoin them with three rails. The spacebetween the upper rails is filled bya pair of vertical stiles and three ply-wood panels set into grooves. I thinkthe main challenge you’ll find mightjust be the large size of the head-board. But it’s not unmanageable.

THE LEGS. To get started, you’ll needto make the two stout, 3"-square legs.These will give you a solid founda-tion. As you can see above, the legblanks are glued up from two piecesof 11/2"-thick stock. Once that job iscompleted, you can cut them tolength, and then turn your attentionto the mortise and tenon joinery.

THE LEG JOINERY. As shown in the leftmargin, each leg has three mortises.Two long mortises for the lower andmiddle rails, and a narrower, openmortise to capture the upper rail.This open-ended mortise makes theassembly go a little easier and it willbe hidden by a cap piece added later.Finally, a shallow groove, sized to

hold the side panels, connects thetwo upper mortises.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE. But before you getstarted on the layout, let me pointout a couple things you need toknow. First, as shown above, youwant to orient the leg blanks so theglue lines are along the sides of theheadboard. They’ll be a lot lessnoticeable this way.

The second item has to do withthe width of the mortises and thegrooves in the frame. I did thingsjust a bit differently here.

To keep things simple, I wantedto set the three plywood panels intofull-width, centered grooves cut intothe frame parts. But now since 3/4"

a.

b .c.



How-To: Cut the Leg Joineryplywood is usually a bit undersize,this requires cutting custom-sizedgrooves to get a good, snug fit. Ididn’t want to cut full 3/4"-wide mor-tises and then have to cut slightlynarrower grooves. So what it boilsdown to is that I sized the width ofthe mortises to the plywood as well.It’s a pretty minor compromise thatmakes the joinery go a lot easier.

GETTING TO WORK. Now you’re readyto get busy laying out the joinery. Ijust kept a scrap of the plywood inmy apron pocket to use for a layoutand joinery gauge.

Once the layout is complete, thedrill press, a couple of sharp chisels,and the router table will take care ofthe hard work. The box at right willlead you through the process.

When you finish routing thegroove in the last step, you’ll want tostay at the router table for just a bitlonger. Install a chamfer bit and thenuse it to ease the bottoms of the legs.This will keep them from chippingwhen the bed is moved.

RAILS AND STILES. With the legs readyto go, you can turn your attentionto connecting them. Your first task isto cut the the three rails and the twostiles to size. Once this was done, Iswapped out the standard blade onmy table saw for a dado blade tohandle the joinery.

Here again, you want to workaround your panel plywood. So first,I cut the centered grooves in theupper and middle rail and the twostiles for the panels. Just sneak upon the width of the groove byturning the pieces end for endbetween passes, as in detail ‘c.’

After the grooves are completed,all the pieces get tenons on bothends. Since the tenons on the railsand stiles are all the same thickness,I first cut the stub tenons on the stilesto get the blade setting right. (Burythe blade in an auxiliary fence.) Thenyou can cut the longer tenons on thethree rails, as in detail ‘a.’

THE PANELS. With the joinery com-plete, all you need now are the threeplywood panels. After cutting themto size, I did a dry fit of the head-board and then gave some thoughton how to approach the glueup.

For me, the real challenge to the leg joinerywas doing things in the right order andwith the right technique.

I started the job at the drill press, asshown in Fig. 1. The completed mortisewill be slightly less than 3/4" wide, so Iinstalled a 5/8"-dia. Forstner bit to drill outthe waste. A fence clamped to the table willtake any guesswork out of centering theholes in the mortises. The tenons on therails will be 11/2" long, so you’ll want to gojust a little deeper with the mortises (1/16"should do it).

When the work at the drill press wasdone, I took the legs to the workbench toclean up the mortises (Fig. 2). The key thingto remember here is that you want to match

the width of the mortises to the thicknessof the plywood for the panels. A scrap of theplywood makes a perfect test tenon tocheck the fit.

When you set down your chisels, thefinal task is to connect the middle andupper mortises with a panel groove. Andsince the groove ends in the middle mortise,I decided the router table was the best placeto do the work (Fig. 3).

The mortises in the legs make routing thegrooves easier by giving you a starting andstopping point for a 1/2"-dia. straight bit. Tokeep the groove centered, make a pass andthen flip the leg end for end for a secondpass. Again, I used a scrap of my plywoodto check for a snug fit.

1a.

2a.

3

a.



{ If one pipe clamp won’t do the job, I’llput two to work, back-to-back. The twopads are turned 90° so the clamps canbe tightened against one another.

{ You can avoid the need for long clampsby giving yourself an alternate clampingsurface. Here I tightened my clamps downon cleats clamped to the rail.

{ A cheap solution is to make two clampsinto one. All it takes is an inexpensivecoupler from the hardware store to maketwo sections of pipe into one long section.

Shop Tips: Stretching Your Clamps

capping theHEADBOARD

The joinery is complete but don’t get too anx-ious and start gluing the headboard together justyet. There’s a certain order to things that you’llwant to know about first.

STAIN NOW. You’ll remember that the headboardframe and the panels are stained contrastingcolors. This left me with a decision — should Istain before or after the assembly. Prestainingmade the most sense. So at this point, I took thetime to sand and stain all the parts. You’ll find thetwo stain colors at our website.

THE ASSEMBLY. After the stain was dry, I carriedall the pieces to the bench and got out the glueand clamps. The large size of the headboard canmake the glueup a little tricky. So I took it instages to make it more manageable. You’ll needsix- foot clamps to reach from side to side. If youdon’t have any long clamps, the box below givesyou several good options.

I started the assembly by gluing the lower andmiddle rail between the legs. When this assemblyis dry, you can drop the stiles (with glue) andpanels into place from above. Finally, the upperrail is glued into the slot mortises in the legs andthe clamps can go on.

A SIMPLE CAP. The last piece to be added to theheadboard is a chamfered cap that covers thetop rail and legs. Glue holds the cap to the longgrain of the top rail but the end grain on top ofthe legs is a poor glue surface. So here, I addeda pair of dowels between each leg and the head-board cap, as shown in details ‘a’ and ‘b.’ If youturn to page 10, you’ll find an easy way to matchup the holes for the dowels.

a. b.



With the headboard complete, mostof the hard work is out of the way.The next job is to build a footboardand a pair of rails to wrap up theframe. Then you’ll add the hardwareto hold everything together. Andfinally, some cleats to support a plat-form for the mattress.

THE FOOTBOARD. First comes the foot-board. You can see in the drawingabove, it’s much simpler than thepaneled headboard — merely a pairof legs with a curved rail connectingthem. Here again, mortise and tenonjoinery supplies the strength.

I’ll only mention a couple thingsabout the legs for the footboard.Here, I didn’t have plywood panels

to worry about, so I cut mortises thatwere a full 3/4"-wide (detail ‘b’). Andsince the footboard has no cap piece,I routed a chamfer on the tops of thelegs as well as the bottoms.

The footboard rail is pretty muchself explanatory. The only twist hereis the gentle curve cut into the loweredge of the rail. You’ll want to dothis after the tenons have been cut,as shown in detail ‘a.’

To lay out the curve, I simply useda flexible strip of wood pulled intoa slight bow by a piece of string tiedbetween the two ends. And onceyou’ve marked the line of the curveon the rail, you can take it to theband saw to cut it to shape.

THE SIDE RAILS. The side rails onlyneed a short mention. Just cut themto size and they’re ready to go.

THE HARDWARE. Now that you haveall the frame pieces made, the nextstep is to install the bed hardwareused to fasten everything. For detailson this, you can turn to page 7.

THE CLEATS. With the fasteners inplace, the frame can be set up andthe cleats that support the platforminstalled. First, I cut the headboardand footboard cleats to fit and gluedand screwed them to the rails (details‘c’ and ‘d’). The side rail cleats needto be set back from the ends of therails in order to clear the end cleats,as shown in detail ‘c.’

a.

d.

making the FOOTBOARD & RAILS

c.

b.

1#/4

M

M

L

L

KJ

I

I

SIDE RAILCLEAT

FOOTBOARDCLEAT

HEADBOARDCLEAT

FOOTBOARDLEG

SIDERAIL

FOOTBOARDRAIL

NOTE: Cleatsare glued

and screwedin place

NOTE:Footboard legs

are glued up fromtwo pieces of

1 -thick stock!/2"

31#/4

6063

78!/2

1!/2

2

80

16

7

60

#8 x 2 Fhwoodscrew

!/2"

Bed railfastener

K

NOTE: Bed railfasteners are mortisedinto legs and side rails

14!/4



When you assemble a bed frame,you want to accomplish two things.First, you want it to be solid as arock. Next, you need to be able toassemble and disassemble the bedframe quickly and easily for mov-ing. Well as you might guess, there’s

hardware available that handlesboth jobs and it works great.

HOW THEY WORK. Thedrawing at upper rightshows how the bed rail

fasteners I used (and mostother types) work. The male plateof the fastener (left in drawing) ismortised into the end of the side rail.It has a pair of tapered hooks thatengage two slots in the female plateof the fastener, mortised into the leg.As the rail drops into place, thetapered face of the hooks pulls ittightly against the female platelocking the leg and rail together. Allit takes to reverse the lock is a solid“thump” on the bottom of the rail.

MORTISES. The only catch is, to getthe best result, the fasteners have tobe mortised snugly in place, flushto the surface. This means cuttingeight mortises, four of these intotough end grain. So it didn’t takeme long to decide that routing thesemortises was the best way to go. Itwas an easy job using a simple jig.You’ll find the details on page 9.

FINISH UP. Once the shallow platemortises were routed, I got out ahand drill to complete the job. Asyou can see in the upper drawing,both parts need a relief area drilledout behind the plate. The side railmortises simply need a couple ofshallow holes to provide clearancefor the nubs on the back of the plate(Fig. 1). On the legs, I drilled adeeper, secondary mortise behindthe slots in the plate to accommo-date the fastener hooks as in Fig. 2.

a.2

NOTE: For details onrouting mortises forfasteners, see page 9

!/2"-dia.Forstner bit

Shallow holesprovide clearance

for nibs

a.1

HOW THEY WORK

Male plate offastener mortisedinto end of rail

Secondarymortise

behind slotsprovidesclearancefor hooks

Femaleplate offastenermortisedinto face

of leg

SIDERAIL

Bed Rail Fasteners

Taperedhooks lockinto slots infemale plate

LEG

< Seated in a snug fit-ting mortise on theleg, the slotted plateprovides a solidattachment point forthe side rails.

{ These bed rail fas-teners give you thebest of bothworlds. They makesetting up theframe easy. Andonce it’s together,it’ll stay together.

knock-down BED RAILFASTENERS



All you need now is a platform tosupport the mattress. And for thisjob, I cut two 3/4" plywood panels.

To get a good fit, you’ll want toassemble the bed frame before cut-ting the panels to size. Then two cor-ners of each panel are notched to fitaround the legs (detail ‘a’).

Finally, to make certain therewasn’t any sag across the centerseam, I fastened a brace between thepanels (detail ’b’). The easy way todo this is to set one panel in theframe and then screw the brace toit. Then the second panel is droppedin place and screwed to the brace.

Now, I took it all apart to com-plete the finish. And after a quickreassembly, it’s ready for use. W

a . b.

Building a wider frame is about theonly change you’ll need to make fora king-size version. But I do wantto mention a couple minor things.

First, when you build the head-board, you’ll have more space tofill with the plywood panels. Thebest way to do this is to leave thetwo side panels the same size andmake the center panel wider.

And then at the tail end of theproject, you’ll want to add extrasupport under the platform. Allthis takes is a centered legscrewed to the platform brace.

A couple final notes. You’ll finddimensions for a full-size bed onour website. And check your mat-tress size before you start work.

A Different Size

adding the PLATFORM

NOTE: Attach centerleg to platform brace

for added support

NOTE: Size of headboard side panelsis identical to queen-size frame

NOTE: Height andlength of bedframe

do not change

Side panelSide panel Center panel

Center Panelmeasures

43#/4 #/4" x 13 "

76

76

76

84



{ This dado clean-outbit is the perfectlength for routingthe shallow mor-tises for the bed railfasteners.

To attach the rails to the headboardand footboard of the platform bed,I used bed rail fasteners. These aremortised into the legs of the bed aswell as the ends of the rails. Andsince they carry the entire weight of

the platform and mat-tress, you’ll want to makesure they fit into the mor-tises like a hand in aglove. In order to do this,

I made a simple jig thatallowed me to quickly rout snug-

fitting mortises for the fasteners, asis shown in the photo at right.

As you can see in the drawingbelow, the jig is just a router tem-plate that fits over the workpiece.The top of the jig is nothing morethan a piece of 1/2"-thick hardwoodwith a slot in the center to match thesize of the bed rail fasteners.

But instead of trying to cut the slotin the center of the top, I glued upthe top out of four separate pieces,using one of the rail fasteners as aspacer to make sure the slot was

perfectly matched tothe hardware.

FENCE. The undersideof the top has a coupleof grooves cut in it tohold a hardboardfence. This way, youcan move the fencefrom one groove to theother to cut the mor-tises on the legs as wellas those in the bedrails. I sized both ofthese grooves for atight, friction fit.

To use the jig, place the fence inthe groove closest to the slot openingand then clamp the jig to the end ofone of the bed rails, as you can see inFig. 1. Using a 1/2" dado clean-out bit(see inset photo at left) rout a shallowmortise in the end of the rail. Thebearing on the bit follows the slot inthe jig, creating a perfectly sizedmortise. (You can use one of the railfasteners as a gauge to check thedepth of the mortise.)

After routing the mortises on thebed rails, you can move the fence tothe outer groove of the jig and repeatthe mortising procedure on the legsof the bed (Figs. 2 and 2a).

Once all the mortises have beenrouted, the next step is to square upthe ends of each mortise with a chisel(Fig. 2b). Then you just have a fewlittle minor details to take care ofbefore screwing the rail fasteners inplace. (See page 7 for more.)

tips from our shop

Glue up topof jig around

one of thebed rail fasteners

15

3

NOTE:Top of jig is

made of-thick stock!/2"

NOTE:Do not

glue hardboardfence in place

#/4

1!/2

!/4"hardboard fence

Settingfor bed rail

Sizegroovesto holdhardboardfence

To routmortise inlegs, move

fence to outergroove

Bed Rail Fasteners

!/2" dadoclean-out bitEND VIEW

Clamp jigto bed rail

Placefence in grooveclosest to slot

2

FRONTSECTION

VIEW

Bedpost

a. b.

1



Headboard CapCap

Leg

!/2"-dia.dowelcenters

!/2"-dia.dowel

a.

Drill holes incap for dowels

SIDESECTION

VIEW

b.

When it came to installing the cap onthe headboard of the bed, I useddowels to keep the pieces alignedand create a stronger joint. I just hadto make sure sure the holes in thetop of the legs lined up with the holesin the bottom of the cap.

To do this, I used dowel centers. Idrilled the holes in the legs first.Then I placed a dowel center in eachhole and centered the cap on theheadboard. By pressing down onthe cap, the dowel centers made“dimples” in the bottom of the cap,letting me know exactly where todrill the matching holes. W

tips from our shop

PLATFORM BED

The platform bed requires minimal hardware. All it takes is one pack-age of bed rail fasteners from either Woodsmith Store (#454242) orRockler (#28597).

You’ll also need to get a flush trim plunge router bit to cut themortises for the fasteners. The one I used came from Amana Tool(#45460-S) and was 1/2" wide with a cutting depth of 1/4". You’ll oftenfind them listed as dado cleanout bits by the manufacturer.

Woodsmith Store

Visit Woodsmith Store online at www.Woodsmithstore.comOr call 1-800-444-7002Monday through Friday, from 8 AM to 5 PM Central Time.

Rockler

Visit Rockler online at www.Rocker.com

hardware & supplies Sources



Materials, Supplies, & Cutting Diagram

A Headboard Legs (2) 3 x 3 - 43B Headboard Bottom Rail (1) 1!/2 x 7 - 63C Headboard Middle Rail (1) 1!/2 x 7 - 63D Headboard Top Rail (1) 1!/2 x 3!/2 x 63E Headboard Stiles (2) 1!/2 x 3!/2 - 13#/4

F Headboard Side Panels (2) #/4 ply. - 13#/4 - 13#/4

G Headboard Center Panel (1) #/4 ply. - 27#/4 - 13#/4

H Headboard Cap (1) 1 x 4 - 68I Footboard Legs (2) 3 x 3 - 14!/4

J Footboard Rail (1) 1!/2 x 7 - 63K Side Rails (2) 1!/2 x 7 - 80

L Side Rail Cleats (2) 1!/2 x 1!/2 - 78!/2

M Headboard/Footboard Cleats (2) 1!/2 x 1!/2 - 60N Platform Panels (2) #/4 ply. - 40#/8 x 61!/4

O Platform Brace (1) #/4 ply. - 6 x 30

• (4 sets) 6" Bed Rail Fasteners w/Screws • (22) #8 x 2!/2" Fh Woodscrews• (8) #8 x 2" Fh Woodscrews• (6) #8 x 1!/4" Fh Woodscrews

Cherry Platform Bed



Strong, simple joinery makes for a sturdy 5-piece bedroom suite that’s easy to build.

Available now at www.PlansNOW.com

WOODSMITH BEDROOM SUITE

Also available at PlansNOW.com: Build the complete

Documents

Plans NOW - Tragically Unhipcamferroni.typepad.com/raves/misc/bed-platform-dn1116.pdf · This queen-size bed completes the ... Bed rail fasteners allow frame ... coupler from the