Project:
My first carpentry project and a large one at that. The headboard serves as an addition to my wife and I's bed. My father-in-law was kind enough to make the bed for us as a wedding gift, he began and finished it while we were on our honeymoon. That was last June 2008. I more or less went into this project with little knowledge of finer woodworking. I was fortunate enough to have my father-in-law as a mentor. My father-in-law has been into carpentry for a number of decades and recently built a large wood shop which he has stocked full of useful equipment. I began working the final design in CAD over my winter break. I deemed the project as my Christmas gift to my wife.
Idea:
The overall shelf design was a creation of my wife's. She initially drew up 3-4 design. This was last summer 'o8. As seen in the pictures, the idea behind the wine bottle lights came to us from a project my uncle made, a wine bottle chandelier. The strips of black walnut contained in each vertical and shelf piece was decided upon when I did my material breakdown. I only had two planks of black walnut to work with and I was going to use as much of it as possible.
Material:
The dark wood is black walnut that came from my grandfather's land and the oak was in the inventory of the Soll Mill.
Material Breakdown:
The exact dimension (green), board number (red) of the headboard. The board numbers correspond to the material list found above.
The dimensions of the finishing boards and material numbers.
The headboard with the finishing overlay. The outside vertical trim pieces were brought down to half the width to better fit the final headboard.
The headboard including the electrical details. The lower outside boxes represent outllets, the middle horizontal boxes represent independent dimmer switches for their respective lights.
Full board material break down. The "X" hashed material represents oak, the "//" hashed material represents black walnut.
Finishing material breakdown.
This represents the original dimensions of the two black walnut boards and how they are to be used. I was able to use nearly all of the black walnut.
My 3D rendition of the headboard and bed combo, to scale.
This was the first photo of the headboard during construction. I wish I would have taken some prior to this point.
I was able to use one solid piece of the black walnut for the mantel. Beautiful! I got creative and cut oak plugs.
The Oak-Walnut-Oak shelf design. The contrast was far more visible prior to staining the wood.
The design turned out to pretty neat. The black walnut finishing trim really finished it off.
My wife found a wine bottle cutter at the local hobby store. It took a couple of trial runs to get the process down. We also spent a fair amount of time looking for the right wine bottle.
The wife loves it!
Notice the contrast between the woods is still visible.
The main bottom shelf and mantle piece offer a small lip if we decide to add a backing.
My wife knew exactly what was going on the headboard and where before I cut the first piece of wood.
