A bed is made. The fourth bedroom downstairs was a storeroom/ playroom/sometimes bedroom and we wanted to make it suitable for all functions. This room is referred to as “The Cave” – it mostly below ground level and does not have any windows. After the other bedrooms were far enough along so that they could be occupied the Cave was emptied and became just an empty room. We wanted a King size bed that folded out of one wall (but not a Murphy Bed).
Since the bed is wider than a sheet of plywood, the first step was to make wider sheets of plywood. We did this by making a “Scarf” joint between two sheets. We needed four wide sheets (one 3/4", one 1/2", and two 1/4"). We started by stacking up the eight sheets in an off set fashion based on the 1 in 7 bevel we were going to use. Then using mainly a power plane, we cut them down to the desired bevel. This is a picture of that process. After completing the scarf we cut them to size and glued up the wide sheets (using West Epoxy).
Then we set about building up the frame of the box. I had seen an ad in a Sunday supplement from Babcock Furniture for a bed and I really liked the curve of the sides. So I approximated the curve and laid out a pattern for the sides and foot. All of the assembly had to be done in the Cave because it rapidly became too big to move back and forth to the garage.
After the four sides were assembled (note that the corners at the foot are made with a rounded block instead of a miter – this is to prevent injury to wandering feet in the night), we built a grid of 1/2" plywood, two inches deep. Then we applied the bottom sheet of 1/4" plywood, glued to grid and glued and nailed around the outside.
The spaces within the grid was filled with a two inch thick
rigid insulation foam - glued in with epoxy. Then another sheet of 1/4" plywood was laid down in the bed on the grid and foam and glued with epoxy. This made for a very rigid box. In fact it would have made a nice raft to float around the lake - but we decided to press on with the bed idea.
It was rigid enough to get it up on some horses where it was a whole lot easier to work on. From here on, most of the work was trim work and making the geometry work to put it away in a box.
While the trim work was going on I also worked
on the geometry of making the bed appear and
disappear.
The picture at the left is a test bed
for this geometry. Fortunately it all worked
(except the mattress is a little thicker and
heavier than anticipated). The head board was
another part of the geometry it is a wide sheet of 3/4" plywood that comes out with the
bed and actually gives some counter weight to the whole
contraption. 
Here is a test of the headboard so that we could
determine the height – it turned out to be as originally cut.
With the information provided here, we could go ahead and put
the top in the box – there is a one inch slot across the back
of the top and the headboard slides up
into it when the bed comes down.
This is some detail of the corner trim on the bed. At the bottom is a flare out and then there is a batten on the top that follows the contour on the sides with a cap on the corners.
We then built cabinets on either side of the bed to complete the wall. This last pictures shows the bed complete but the cabinets still lack shelves and doors on the cupboards. But the bed itself is made.
