Verandah Chair from Bunk Bed

As found and as photographrd on my flip phone.  2 bunk beds free to good home in Airey's Inlet

Bed with the head and end removed

This was the only branding I could find on the beds

Done!

Here is a bit of construction detail.

Side view.

With cushions on the verandah.

Hi

A few weeks ago, during Easter, my family spotted some bunk beds out the front of a house which were "free to good home".  The house happened to be one my parents had owned, and the beds were ones my brother and I had slept in when growing up, maybe from ages 8 to 24.  So I was curious about the beds, and went to have a look at them on my trike, and then when I decided it was worth doing something with them, went and got them in the car.

My first thought for the bunks was to make a chair out of them, and I spent a fair while looking at the bed head, working out how they could be narrowed to make a single chair.  It all seemed a bit complicated,  but after a while I thought "oh, that would not really be necessary, if I just kept the heads roughly as they are, it could be a 2 person wide chair".  So this became the plan.  It happened we had some 40 x 40 cm cushions from Lincraft and I used these as a template for making the double chair.

Working out what to do was probably the hardest part of the building process, and once I'd decided on that, the rest just sort of followed.  The bed rails were shortened dramatically, and the cut and drilling pattern of the head end of the rails were put into the foot end.  A few chairs were measured for height, and then I worked out how to replicate that height in the chair by sawing and drilling the head and foot.  Then it was all reassembled and the boss (my wife Christine) had said she wanted arm rails, so this was taken into account.

The arms took a bit of time, I used 12 x 20 dressed all round timber from Porta via Demar as a scaffold for the arms, and except for screws, this was the only part of the chair that didn't come from a bunk.  The whole thing is done now, including a cushion change from red and green to brown and blue dictated by Christine. 

So that is one chair done, but I picked up 2 bunks from the dumpster pile, so I plan to make another twin chair within a few weeks.  Our son Ewan made a small table in high school and he no longer wants it so maybe bits of that will end up in the MKII chair.  I will report on that when it happens.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Timber Leaning Trike, Part 9

Start of the day: marking up......

corflute to.................

make a bath to soak a few plywood pieces.  The bath is put on a slope and has no top wall, so that as much as possible of the largest piece fits in.

Sawing off the front of the steering column on NLT (Nusre leaning Trike) 6

And filling in the gap with a 3d (woohoo) printed (woohoo) stopper.

The seat needs 4 of these parts but I had only ordered 3, so I made one using a handsaw and grinder.

Inner frame and seat.  Most of the hard work of bending is done by this stage.

Final position for parts shown 2 photos above. 

Had to extend the hole in the tailbox floor a bit to get it over part of the seat frame.

End of the day, almost done.

Attaching the rear panel.  The grain orientation for this part is wrong, so it needs lots of persuasion to bend properly.

Hi,

What I did today......... Building a tailbox and fixing up a steer so the front of my bike fits into the car easier.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Next Post

Flower of the Month - May

Hi, in this post I feature a tree that is overhanging our back fence and I think its a lilly-pilly, although nobody I know could say, even our gardener, Susie.  Could someone confirm this please?  There are plenty of fruit still on the tree. Apparently you can cook and eat them, I will point Christine in the recipe web page thingy direction and see if she can get fired up to cook something.  And then I will blog about it.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Timber Leaning Trike Part 8

Clearance for front fork to pedals, right, and....

left.

Painting the front bottom bracket on the old decommissioned letterbox.

The new letterbox which is made from decorated plywood salvaged from a hard rubbish pile.  The lid is a lump of unimold plastic.

Derailleur mount on front right dropout ready for tapping and

being tapped.

Hi

After a few days break, I am back building my wooden leaning trike, and yesterday I set up the front bottom bracket.  Its quite important (!) that the pedals don't hit the front forks, and this depends on a  combination of the pedal axle, the cranks and the fork and the height of the bottom bracket relative to the fork.  So I was quite careful about setting up the bottom bracket shell on the frame, and putting all the parts in place before brazing the mounting plate onto the shell.  Fortunately there was about 8mm clearance on each side and (woohoo) I found a bearing set that wasn't dodgy. 

When this was done I marked a line on the bottom bracket shell and dissassembled it from the frame.  Then I brazed on the mounting plate, being careful to line it up with the marked line.  Painting followed that, I will sneak them into the heated loungeroom tonight so it dries better.

Quite happy with progress, with the black parts of the bike bolted to it, it is starting to look like something other than a block of wood.

Regards

Steve Nurse 

Next Post

Timber Leaning Trike Part 7

Gluing and screwing parts together.  The "hi vis shirt" is mainly a "dirt shirt" to save my better clothes getting crap like paint and resin and sawdust all over them.

Head Tube Plates,

gluing them.

Painting bottom bracket shell.

Ripping apart 2 bottom brackets from a failed experiment.

Drying parts overnight.  I moved on from the frame to painting some seat parts.

Right to left: Phoebe, Christine, Sarah, Ewan, Richard Stephen.

3d printer, woohoo!

Hi

I've been continuing to build the frame for my wooden leaning trike and now its almost finished.  I've screwed and glued on the head tube plates and varnished the frame, and assembled and painted one of the bottom brackets.  The other bottom bracket had a few problems, the thread somehow became knackered, and I needed to whack an assembly of 2 shells onto the lather to harvest one good one.  Outside of biking, my brother has been visiting from England and we caught up at a nearby restaurant, and I ordered and received a new Cetus 3d printer.  More on the printer once I put it together and have it working.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Next post

Timber Leaning Trike Part 6

Repairing one of the timber bike parts.  The diameter of the hole for the head tube bearing was too small, and this setup was used to fix it.

Preparing the steel plates used to distribute stress from the head tube bearings into the frame.  The holes that will carry screws needed to be enlarged and chamfered.  I'm not using all the holes in the plates.

Finishing off the frame.  With this epoxy glue, I'm binding the internal frame reinforcements to the frame sides.

Parts stored under cover at the end of the day.  One side of the frame has been glued and the prepared steel plates have been painted ready to be attached to the frame.

Hi

Pictures tell the story today.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Next Post

Timber Leaning Trike Part 5

Tapping chainring bolts with a 3/16" tap ......

So it can carry an extra "trouser guard"

Screwing the lower part of the frame to the front end

All the front plates in place

Record Store Day poster outside Basement Discs

Parking right out the front!

"Thin White Ukes" playing inside, I stayed for 3 or 4 songs.

My wife Christine at home, checking out my op shop purchases

Tailbox demounted so....

I could do this repair, securing the 2 sides of the bottom part together.

 Hi, here are a few photos of bike building and excursions from the last few days.  I spent some time working on the chainring for the bike which will be a 38 tooth Biopace.  It needs 2 chainguards to work on my bike, and I made one by cropping the teeth off a larger chainring.  The second is timber and today I tapped the chainring bolts to accommodate screws to hold the timber guard.

In the middle of the day I got out, visited Basement discs in the city on World Record Store Day wher the big attraction was a free Billy Bragg performance.  It was crowded and by the time I left they were full up, only letting one person in for each one going out.  Good on 'em!

On the way home, I visited an op shop, the council recycling depot and the hardware store.  In the afternoon, I did a bit more work on the wooden bike frame, gluing together some more assemblies.  All for now,

Steve Nurse

Next Post

Timber Leaning Trike Part 4

Start of the day.  These are the frame side plates as they were cut from the plywood together with the solid plywood parts (made yesterday) they will join.

Some more parts I worked with today, they will make up top and bottom plates for the frame.

2 types of corners, those circled green is cut with an extra semicircular profile to eliminate interference between the rectangular timber pin and the hole.  The corners circled red were drawn as right angle corners but the inner corners show the tool tip radius.

Removing the excess part of the rectangular pin.  I've placed a spare plywood part over the pin to get the right cut length.

Clamping after gluing.

Top plate is 3 layers thick, clamping after screwing and gluing.

Me in the back yard with one of my current bikes.

Work done at the end of the day.  Top and bottom sets of parts are glued together and drying.  Hopefully they will dry straight.

Hi, here are some photos and captions showing today's progress.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Next Post