Tiesters
are the top rails connecting the bed posts. These are not a essential
part of the bed and are for decoration only. Some hang some decorative
material from them to display a period charm to the design of the
bed. Many pencil post beds, however are displayed without these
top rails. If you are not going to have the tiesters as part of
your bed then you can skip this.
The first step in making tiesters is to make four boards to connect the posts. We rip them to be 1 1/2 wide and use material that is one inch thick.Once the boards are cut to size set up your saw with dado blades and use a push fence as pictured below.
In this picture the
dado is cutting ½ of the way through the material. It will
take two passes to cut the full 1 ½" width required
for this cut. Note: The width of this cut is 1 ½ which is
the same as the width of the piece as they will overlap in the end
and the consistency of this measurement is important.
The final cut has been made. Note:
be sure both ends of each piece are cut this way and on the same
side!
When pieces are milled
properly they should overlap with an exact fit.
Using a 3/8 drill bit drill a hole
through the ends of each tiester.
You need to route
the edges, to make them smooth.
The end result of drilling the
holes is that a side tiester should be overlap on an end tiester,
and the holes should align perfectly. A trick to getting things
right the first time is to do use some short pieces of wood that
are the same width and thickness as the tiesters and dado the ends,
drill them and test them for alignment before starting using your
actual pieces.
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