Finished Product up front
Design
My niece has a few American Girl Dolls and my mother thought it would be nice for her to have a bed to put them in. She had originally bought a friend of the family a bed about a decade ago so we got a hold of it and I took some measurements.
Made a more detailed drawing after finishing here, but I built off the above sketch and adjusted as I went.
Build
First step was to get all the pieces cut to size. For the side rails and headboard I used 4/4 cherry planed down to just over 1/2". The bedposts were 6/4 so about 1-1/4" when all cleaned up.
After that I added some curves to the rails and headboard. To do this I just printed out a nice arc on a few sheets of paper, put down some painters tape on the wood and used some Super 88 adhesive to glue the pattern down. This makes it a ton easier to remove later on without having to plane the boards down or remove the adhesive from the wood.
Then I used a jigsaw to cut out the pattern and cleaned them up on the disc sander.
For the other pieces I traced the first board to the others and rough cut the shape with the jig saw then used the first board as a pattern with my router table and flush trim bit. I didn't have any carpet tape or double sided tape so I made due here with painters tape, it worked pretty well only had one piece slide on me, but that was pretty easy to clean up.
Using the jigsaw first definitely helped as a spiral cut router bit isn't great at hogging out material.
Oh and I lied I actually didn't plane down the boards until after I had shaped them, they just felt very bulky at this point. After planing them down I rounded all the edges.
Dry fitting to look at proportions and to see how large the support for the mattress has to be.
Decided it was a tad bit too wide so ended up cutting off some of the headboards.
At this point I decided I wanted to age the cherry a bit since it was pretty light, so I used a baking soda/water solution to help it darkened the wood a few shades which looked pretty nice, it'll continue to age/darken over time. Wish I had some before/after shots but whoops!
Next was to let the pieces sit for a few months... because I did other projects and wasn't sure how I wanted to do the attachments. I "settled" on just screwing it together and putting caps over the screws... and when I went to buy the screws I accidentally bought a doweling/loose tenon jig instead (beadlocker pro)
after drilling approximately 8000 holes I dry fitted the pieces
Going forward I think I might drill the holes a bit deeper next time as there were some minor gaps in the final fit-up that I think I missed during the initial dry-fit. Also need to take care in making sure everything is squared up when drilling, some of the leg "mortises" were off by a little bit as those took a bit of finagling to clamp in
Finish
Looks good! After looking at all the tiny crevices and corners I decided it'd be easier to apply the finish before assembly. I used Arm-R-Seal gloss for a few coats until I had a nice even surface finish and then applied satin for the final sheen. Going with gloss first helps bring out the figure without muddying it at all.
I think I might have to take back any bad things I've ever said about cherry after this project, super nice to work with and without the stereotypical "cherry" stain it's actually a very beautiful wood with an interesting grain.
Assembly
Glue up was a bit hectic, might have to get some Titebond III for the longer set time in the future so I don't feel as rushed.
Overall it worked fairly well, there are a few small gaps in the joints as I don't think I tightened down the clamps enough but everything is very rigid and stable so it shouldn't be an issue unless someone my size sat on it and rocked around a bunch... but for little kids and dolls it should last quite a few years.
The happy "customer"
