I drilled 1 ½″ pocket holes in the bottom end of this 2×4 and assembled using 2 ½″ pocket hole screws. Then I cut a 16 ½″ long (double check your own measurements to make sure that’s the length you need) 2×4 to add on to the end of the dowel rails (shown in yellow below). I drilled a pocket hole in the inside end of the 2×2 (see diagram below), then glued and installed the dowels and clamped it all down. Then, I lined up the right ends together, clamped, and transferred these locations to the right side of the bottom 2×4 piece so the holes will line up properly. Since these top and bottom boards aren’t the same length, I found the center of the shorter 2×2 piece (22 ¼″ from each end) and measured my dowel locations on it just like before.
Step 5: Assemble Front Bed Railsįor the front, I cut a 2×4 to 76″ long and a 2×2 to 44 ½″ long. If you didn’t want to use timber screws, regular 2 ½″ or 3″ long wood screws would work fine OR you could use 1 ½″ pocket holes and 2 ½″ pocket hole screws instead. These screws are pretty big, so I do recommend predrilling to help prevent the wood from splitting when driving them. I measured the overall height of the pieces from step 1. Then, I repeated this process two get two identical sides. Once these rails were together, I used a large clamp to press everything together and checked for a consistent height from side to side.ĭepending on the length you cut your dowels and the depth you drill your holes, your overall size may vary some, but mine ended up being about 20”. Then, I could flip the board with the dowels installed upside down and use a rubber mallet to tap them into the holes on the other board. I found it easiest to glue the dowels into the one of the boards first, then add glue into the holes of the other. Getting everything to line up is a little tricky and will require some patience. Then, I applied wood glue into the holes and inserted the dowels. So these ended up being about 15 15/16” long. NOTE: The dowels were exactly 48” long, so in order to get three equal length dowels from each piece, I had to cut them SLIGHTLY under 16” to account for the blade kerf when making the cuts. Then, I sanded these pieces really well, and cut my dowels to roughly 16” long. Once all the holes were drilled, I pulled out my pocket hole jig and drilled 1 ½″ pocket holes into the ends of the 2×4 and one on each end across the top side of the 2×2 piece. You could use a stop collar to be extra precise if you wanted, but it’s not super critical as long as you are pretty consistent. I drilled until the cutter head was flush with the top of the board for each hole (it was about ⅜″ deep). Once all my dowel locations were marked, I used a ¾” forstener bit to drill out each location. I clamped the top and bottom pieces together and transferred the marks to each piece so they’d match perfectly. Then, I set my Multi-Mark to 4 ¼” and made several marks out from this center point down the length of the boards all 4 ¼” apart. NOTE: For each side panel of this bed, to make things easier, I used an odd number of dowels so that I could start in the center and go out from there marking where my dowels would go. Then, I marked the center (17 ½″ from each end). I set it to mark ¾” offset and drew a line down the middle of each of these pieces on the narrow side.
I used this handy Kreg Multi-Mark tool for making most of my marks. Prefer to print? Grab the printable building plans here! I began assembling the side panels first by cutting a piece of 2×2 and a piece of 2×4 to 35″ long for the top and bottom (You need one of each PER SIDE, so two of each total).
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