The KRR Bed was is a king-sized captain style bed (drawers underneath) made from locally sourced Mardrone and Eastern Cherry. When it was all said and done, I had around 200 hours of work put into this project, and I am just thrilled with the way it came out - and with how happy Kris and Renee are with it.
I ordered the Cherry from Pennsylvania - I wanted three or four large planks cut from the same log. These planks (above) are around 16 inches wide, and the are purely quartersawn. Perfect for the live edge frame that Kris and Renee were looking for. I wanted the wood to come from the same log, so I could successfully match all of the grain an coloring on the bed. These early stages can be very frightening as I have to make cuts into these perfect planks - so a lot of planning an chalking out has to happen before I put the wood to the saw.
The headboard and footboard are built from torsion boxes. That is, I built plywood boxes that have a webbing of plywood inside. This gives me an amazingly strong core that also is large enough to sit inside the frame of Cherry. Above I am showing how I inlaid the walnut into the box face.
And here is the walnut inlaid and surfaced perfectly flat. I will now veneer the Madrone panels over this surface on both sides of the box.
Here I am laying out the Madrone veneer in the "woven" pattern. As soon as I was happy with the layout of the veneer, I hand-planed, edge-glued, and taped every piece together. Then it was ready to be bonded to the torsion box substrate.
Here the veneer panels have been bonded to the substrate, and I have routed out the shadow lines through the madrone panels and into the walnut that I inlaid into the torsion box earlier.
The frame of the headboard and footboard was a grain matched, live edge 8/4 Cherry. I wanted the corner to be mitered, so the grain could cascade over the edges. To do this, the miters have to be perfect - here I am hand planing the sawn miters to a true and perfectly flat 45 degrees.
This big old beam of Port Orford Cedar has been the source of my drawer bottoms for almost three years. I love the look, feel, and most importantly smell of the cedar when you open a drawer. I will cut off about a 1/2 of an inch at a time and surface it down to about 5/16.
I am setting up to cut my dovetails for the drawers. The faces will be Cherry, but the sides will be rift sawn Ash.
With the dovetails cut, I now make sure everything is sized and ready to go before putting the drawers together.
This is the glue-up for the footboard. You can see the Madrone panels are nestled nicely in the Cherry frame. The miters are reinforced with floating tenons, and I have applied glue-blocks to get extra clamping force on the joint.
And finally... all of the parts ready to go on their delivery trip to their new home! (And boy does that shop need a thorough clean)...
To see the finished bed -
2015
The KRR Bed is made from solid Cherry planks and "woven" panels of Mardrone. I mitered the corners of the headboard and footboard to allow the grain to be continuous down both feet. By locating sequential planks of quartersawn Cherry, I was able to keep the grain on the headboard, footboard and drawer rails to be nearly identical, and pleasing to the eye. I focused on the sapline, using that as a element of continuity. The drawers are dovetailed by hand and have Ash sides. The bottoms are waxed Port Orford Cedar. There are also two "secret" panels at the headboard on either side.