End of the day and this is what I have to show for it!  These will be the insides of the platform so there was no need to add the panels — just the frame for strength.  In my teaching days the term “mass production unit” always had a bad connotation for me.   Sure, I wanted my students to be able to transfer the skills learned in a junior high woodshop to the real world but thought it equally important that they develop their creativity and interests.  Luckily I always had a principal that shared my beliefs and never incorporated the dreaded mass production unit into my curriculum.

That being said though, being efficient in your work is important.  Rather than being a mindless form of mass production where you do the same thing over and over, efficiency means planning your work out to be the most productive.  The panel and frame construction of this bed requires that.  Much of the time spent here has to do with setting up the saw.  If you recall, this project began with cutting the rails to size and preparing the stock for the vertical pieces.  These were then dado’d at one time so there was only one set up required for all of this step.  The dado head was removed, replaced by a regular blade to cut the vertical (stiles I suppose) to required size.  Nineteen of these were needed so I made something like 23 of them.  Instead of using a tenoning jig, the dado head will be used cut them.  This time, for efficiencies sake, the width of the dado is equal to the thickness of the 3/4″ plywood that will be used for the base.  This way the rails can be dado’d to fit the plywood and that same width can be used to cut the tenons to length, about 5/8″.  Here’s how that is set up:

After setting a stop block on the fence and making a trial cut a pencil line is drawn to mark the location of the stop block (center picture).  This gives you a visual reference so you can nudge the stop block one way or another to dial in the needed measurement.

All that remained to complete this operation was some final fitting.  Whenever I machine joinery my preference is to leave the pieces slightly oversized.  This is an excellent place to use a rabbet block plane which is my preferred tool for this operation.  I can’t say enough about Lie-Nielsen’s version of this tool.  The reason I prefer it over a shoulder plane is because it’s wider, shoulder planes are great for the shoulder but for the tenon cheek the block plane works better for me.

I’ve managed to spray the panels this morning with a low sheen black.  It’s made by Sherman Williams and is advertised as an all surface, latex enamel.  Spraying and surface coating wood is not one of my strong suits yet but given enough personal projects to practice on I may be tempted to try it for a paying customer!