Modern Queen Bed From Hickory

This queen bed has a low profile yet still has some unique design aspects. Hickory is very hard wood (it's used for baseball bats 😬) and that made this project a little more difficult. Over all I'm happy with how it turned out and you can watch the video above or read below to see how I made it.

I’m starting with the sides and needed something flexible to draw a consistent curve. I have a piece of PVC cove moulding which worked perfectly. I clamped it to one side and played with the shape until I found something I liked. 

I started cutting it out with a jigsaw but hickory is really hard and I don’t have a sharp blade on hand so it took some time. I cleaned up the first cut pieces with sanding and then I traced the shape so I could cut the other side. For this cut, I stayed away from the line a bit and then I used blue tape and CA glue to stick the sides together making sure to line up the ends. I used a pattern to cut the second piece but the bit wasn’t long enough so I had to do it in two passes.

The last thing to do on the sides is to remove a section on both ends for the front and back pieces. I traced a cut off that’s the right size and cut it out. And I cut this notch on both sides and on each end.

The front and back pieces are made from two boards. They’ll eventually get glued together but I need to cut some joinery first. I want to create a half lap with the pieces where the top will sit in the notches of the sides and the bottom will sit between the sides. And that just means I cut the boards at slightly different lengths. The top is the overall width of the bed and the bottom is that length minus the width of the sides.

One last thing to do is cut a notch in the center of the bottom boards where the center support for the bed will go later. Now I can glue the top and bottom boards together making sure to leave the proper overhang on each end. With that dry, I clamped the sides, front, and back together so I can measure and cut the center support. The bed frame is upside down here.

The main components of the bed are basically done at this point so I started making the front leg. I glued two boards together to make the stretcher. Once that dried, I cut a curve on the bottom using the bandsaw. Then cut an angle on the ends with the table saw. I went with 7 degrees.

I had enough material in cut offs to get all the feet. So I cut one out and traced it on the cut off pieces I had. I glued them together just like I did everything else.

I decided to attach the feet and stretcher with a bridle joint. This will end up looking very clean and it’s a strong joint. I cut the tenon with the table saw taking several passes to remove all the material.

I removed most of the material on the feet with the bandsaw but because of the angle I had to do some chisel work. Then I can glue it all together. Once that dried, I cut the feet to their final size and I just enough material to make them the right length.

At this point I reviewed all the parts and noticed small amounts of tear out in some areas. To fix this I used Starbond CA glue in brown. It comes in a couple different colors to match your project and once finish was applied, it wasn’t even noticeable. You can follow the link and use JTWOODWORKS10 to get 10% off.

https://www.starbond.com/?rfsn=4758288.9cf41c

I could have glued all the parts together but I wanted the option to take this bed apart in the future. So I pre-drilled and screwed everything together. I started with the center support on the front and back. Then the front of the sides can be screwed in from underneath but the back gets screwed in from the top. Then I can attach the front leg.

I also cut pieces to help support the weight on the back and center pieces of the frame.

I added these strips to sides to support the slats and I used a spacer on top to maintain the proper height. I was planning to use furring strips for slats but when I went to pick up the material, I saw these shiplap boards. These came out to be about a third of the price and all I needed to do was cut the tongue off the end and rip them into 3” sections.

I found this board that had a sapwood streak running along one side with clear grain in the rest of the board and I knew I wanted to use that for the headboard. I joined the sapwood edge to get a clean glue surface on both pieces and then cut slots with the biscuit jointer. These biscuits just hold everything in line during the glue up. With the glue dry, I cut a detail on the corner and added a round over on all the edges. After a bit of sanding, I added some finish and the bed was done.

This bbed was a super fun project and hickory wasn't as challenging to work with as I originally thought. Make sure to check out the video above to see a more detailed explanation of how I made the bed. Thanks to check out this project!