I designed and built this queen-sized, Shaker-style bed using the technical information from Jeff Miller’s excellent book, Beds.

I mostly used hand tools, including the stock preparation.

The headboard is a single, bookmatched board. The original board was nearly 12" wide. A friend from the woodworking club resawed it for me on his big bandsaw. He also planed the surface using his industrial machines, which saved a lot of hand work.

The mattress rests on yellow pine slats which are 1.5" x 4.5", spaced 1/2" apart. Miller recommended using 1" hard maple, but that was was very expensive in my area. The yellow pine works fine. The bed is very firm and comfortable.

The bed breaks down using bed bolts. I could not find any attractive bed bolt covers, so I just used a square of figured cherry with a single brass nail at the top. The cherry square twists up to expose the bolt head.

Before applying the Tried & True boiled linseed oil, I “stained” the cherry by letting it sit in the sun for a few hours. I really like the resulting color.