Wood Bed - Project Get Shorty

Although the wood is cut to fit, it's a good idea to lie the boards into the bed just to check things out. Also the lip holes must be located on the boards as well; we'll get to that in a second.

Bruce recommends spacing the boards roughly 7/16-inch apart. As luck would have it, when the wood is shipped Bruce puts a thin wood cap at the end of each box. By cutting up these wood caps and placing two of them together it gave me a perfect spacer for my initial mock-up.

Along with the wood kit, Bruce also sent the polished stainless-steel bed strips. With all of my wood in place, and spaced out, I then laid down the stainless strips to make sure everything was lining up.

For the most part, the bed wood is held in place by bolting the stainless strips to the crossbraces on the bed. However, the sides of the bed wood are directly bolted to the lip of the bed by dropping a carriage bolt down from the top side. In order to do that though, holes must be drilled in the new wood kit. Once the bed wood is in place the holes could then be marked.

With the wood removed I then grabbed the appropriate drill bit and drilled the holes for the carriage bolts.

Next up it was time to get stationary in a clean indoor facility, because the next steps require A LOT of sanding, staining, varnishing, and, mostly, time. Therefore, I shot down to Home Dept to pick up some 2x4s and some sawhorse braces, for about $20, and made some waist-level sawhorses. With the wood comfortably resting in my garage, I then grabbed a file and ran it across the edges of the boards to remove any wood fibers, and to slightly round off the edges.

I used a file with a flat surface and a rounded surface. For the grooves I found it was easiest to file the inner edge with the flat side at a 45 angle.

For the outer groove edge I simply ran the rounded edge of the file over the edge.

Also at this time I grabbed a round file and worked the drilled holes in the wood.