bed joinery

what's the recommended way to join the headboard and footboard to the bedposts? I'm working on the footboard now, it's an 11" wide by 62" long panel, and was planning to M&T it to the bedposts, with some rather large

2" deep tenons. should I leave room at the top and bottom for movement? seems movement would be considerable across the width of the footboard. Should I pin it from the back of the footboard, to be concealed with the rails? Anything special I need to know about pinning?

wood is Jatoba, btw.

Reply to
tmbg
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tmbg,

BAD had a similar sort of question (see "Wide tenon question...") there are a lot of good answers there. My best advice is to get the FWW (Fine Woodworking) issue # 165. It has the perfect article describing wood movement and how to work with it when doing wide tenons (he shows several methods for what you're asking about).

Good luck, Mike

Reply to
Mike in Idaho

Pin and float the footboard, pin the bottom rail. Should be all you need. There is a bottom rail, isn't there?

If not, make blind sliding dovetails about 5" down from the top, 4" long.

Reply to
George

Reply to
tmbg

Yeah, it was last year in the fall. If you go to their website

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you'll find a link for ordering back issues. You might be able to download just the article (though I liked the article in there about rough milling your wood for your project as well -- probably my favorite FWW in the last year). It would be worth purchasing.

Mike

PS. If you can do it, George's floating dovetail sounds like it would work too.

Reply to
Mike in Idaho

Floating dovetail, eh? Sounds neat... is that in that issue too?

Reply to
tmbg

Oh, that floating dovetail. Replied too fast to Mike...

No bottom rail, the footboard is at approx the same height as the bottom rail. Not sure what you mean by float the footboard, and by p> Pin and float the footboard, pin the bottom rail. Should be all you need.

Reply to
tmbg

If the 11" panel is solid wood, there will be a fair amount of expansion/contraction across the grain. A good way to handle this is with two tenons on each side at the top and bottom of the panel. I would probably make the tenons about 2 1/2". Make the lower mortise a good fit. For the upper mortise, make a firm fit for the thickness of the tenon, but enlarge the length of the mortise about 3/8" overall (depending on species and finish). Glue the bottom mortise and tenon, but not the upper tenon. It is allowed to float up and down. However, you should pin the upper tenon. The pin should go into a slot in the tenon to allow for movement, yet won't allow any withdrawal of the tenon. You could also offset the slot slightly deeper so the pin draws the tenon tight into the mortise. The pin could be decorative or placed in the back and concealed.

Reply to
Preston Andreas

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