My wife and I agreed we wanted to try a different color milk paint on the Continuous Arm Windsor. This also afforded me the opportunity to try General Finishes Milk Paint for the first time. I am doing a two color painting, still going for a mottled look, similar to the black over red I have used on my other chairs. The first coat, pictured above, is Federal Blue. This will be covered with a darker Coastal Blue wash coat. Because I am using two shades of blue, I doubt the mottled appearance will be as dramatic as the black over red. I will post more pictures in my next post (it won't be in a month I promise) along with my thoughts on the GF milk paint.
One of the projects on my "Honey-Do-List" is a proper bed frame for our new Sleep Number Bed. The material is from an Ash tree that had been blown over when a tropical storm had come through our area a few years back. The tree yielded just shy of 1000 bd. ft. of beautiful material. This tree has provided the material for my bench, shave horse, a Welsh Stick Chair and now the king size bed and two night stands, yet to be started. It will be interesting to see just how much furniture I will be able to make from just this one tree.
The two pictures above are the dry fitting and glue-up of the head and foot board. I did not have material wide enough for the panels so I re-sawed the material then did the glue up. I wanted to have an interesting, but not overwhelming, flow of the grain pattern from one panel to the next.
The glue up is almost complete. All that is left to do is install the top boards and prep the side boards for hardware. Then I will do one last dry fit/assembly to ensure everything is copacetic before applying the finish. By the way Ash is a heavy wood and it is going to be an adventure getting this headboard upstairs. Ready the ibuprofen!
~ Ray Schwanenberger
