Secret Project No. 1

Well, this is one of the secret Christmas projects, in a somewhat finished state. It is a knock-down bed, but it is missing the slats that will form the base for the air mattress.

I got the idea for a friend of mine who was cobbling together a sort of platform for her air mattress for Pennsic. While it worked, it wasn't pretty or easy to put together.

This bed is made out of poplar and is painted with Lexington Green milk paint. I have one coat of satin finish polyurethane applied but it needs at least one more coat. We going to use the slats from her other bed for this one. Then it will be done!

I learned a few things while working on this project. I suck at mortises. I really need to practice chiseling. Keeping your chisels sharp helps a lot. I learned how to sharpen my chisels, but I probably need to stop and sharpen them more often during a project. Wood filler hides mistakes. I do need to invest in better mortising chisels - apparently there is a difference in chisels. I hear you all laughing at me! Anyway, the bed works and is easy to put together. I used my own knockdown bed as a guide with a change or two.

I did get some cool loot over Christmas, specific to this project - three of Roy Underhill's "Woodwrights Shop" books. I've only had time to sort of flip through them at this point, but I think they are going to be very useful and informative.