Viking Bed

Well, the hubby and I have been talking about it for years, and we finally decided it was time. We have been talking about making a "Viking" bed for years. Something to get us up off  the cold, hard ground at camping events. I began with plenty of research and decided that the simple four post style from the Gokstad find would be good for our purposes.

I found many different reproductions using a variety of number and type of slats, but I decided to stay true to the original, at least in that respect, and use 7 slats in the bed. I decided that, because it provided a shopping list, the plans found here would be the easiest to try to follow. I did come across a few errors that appear to be present in the plan drawings, but if you are careful and double check everything, it is easy enough to follow these directions. We decided to make a bed to take a full size mattress. So the box needed to be 54x75 inches on the inside. 

So, research mostly out of the way, it was time to buy materials and get a move on. My husband and I live in a townhouse and so do not have an area to work on a project as big as this, so I enlisted my dad's help. I asked him if he was up for a father/daughter project to work on during the weekends. He agreed. 

Thus, the shopping began! Even though many of the bed "reproductions" found on online for SCA events have been made entirely from pine, my dad had issues with this. He really thought we should use a nice hardwood, so we decided to look into Oak. Menards had a sale on their select hardwood boards, 10% off and extra 11% off mail in rebate, so we went and got our shopping out of the way.

After a ton of figuring and math we decided to make the box out of oak, and purchased 2 boards 1x6x12 feet. We determined we could get the side rails, end rails and middle slat out of the two boards. We went to buy the posts, and while the directions we were going off of called for 3x3's, due to how difficult they are to find, we just went with 4x4's instead, adjusting the lengths of the other boards accordingly. Planning to use the nice oak, I quickly decided that at around $35 for a board to get two posts out of, the oak wasn't worth the price. The oak 4x4's offered were made of lots of small pieces of lower quality oak that had been glued and pieced together and then sandwiched between two nice boards. I just wasn't happy not using a SOLID piece of wood for my posts, even if was still all oak. 

On to plan b! There were some nice Douglas Fir 4x4's that were 12 feet long that would give us plenty to cut the 4 posts out of, at about a quarter of the price, and the wood was a solid piece. This just left us with the remaining 6 slats needed. I finally convinced my father that with the stability of the oak side rails and middle slat, we would be fine using cheap pine for the remaining slats. My husband and I combined weigh around 250 lbs. so breaking furniture isn't usually an issue for us. The cheap pine was purchased in 1x6 by 12 feet pieces (3 boards, to be cut into 2) for less than $5 a board. 

That makes our total shopping list:

(2) 1x6 boards 12 feet long

(1) 4x4 board 12 feet long

(3) 1x6 board 12 feet long

I would list the measurements we used to cut everything down right now, but I left my plans at my fathers garage so I will have to update later. At any rate - we started work on March 2, 2012. Here are some pictures of what we got done on the first day. Sorry for the quality, these were taken on my phone. 

Here my dad is adjusting the saw so it can cut the 4x4. 

I am cutting one of the 1x6 boards into the length we needed for the slats. 

Here are the boards for the posts. The one on the right isn't cut to size yet. We left these rather long, because were hadn't decided yet on how tall we wanted the posts to be. 

Here are the oak boards, you can see on the left the side rails and the end rails and then on the right is the middle slat. 

I think better visually when I can see everything all laid out, so I did some drawing on a piece of scrap so I could see just what the ends of the side rails would need to be cut like. 

Here my dad is using the tool the mortising tool he purchased for the job. It is a Dewalt tool (don't know the number, sorry) and did not fit his very old saw that converts to a drill press. He had to do a lot of finiking to make it work, but in the end, it works! However, I do not really condone this sort of behavior, as it could be quite dangerous. If a attachment doesn't fit a tool, then it shouldn't be used. There is no stopping my dad though. 

Here is the first cut into some scrap from the posts. 

Here is the marks I drew on the posts to show where to cut. Yes, there are extra lines there, but I wanted to be 100% sure everything was lining up properly on each post so everything would be level and correct. 

Here is my dad putting the mortises into the first of the bed posts. 

 

The cut made by the tool into the scrap wood.

 The partially finished mortises on the bed post. 

Unfortunately we didn't get a ton done that day, because I work 3rd shift so I got very sleepy around 3pm and had to get home to bed. Making the mortising tool fit the drill press took a good long time, but while he was doing that I did get all the cuts marked out on everything and the math pretty well all sorted out. 

So, there's day one of the Viking bed! We aren't on any time crunch because we won't need the bed until the end of June for Baron Wars. More as it is finished!