This Client Screwed Me Over

I built this bed then set it on fire all because I thought it would look cool but I was wrong I hate it I don't know how to fix this because I have no more material so in a last-minute effort to save this simple bed design I somehow ended up here I think the worst part of this bed is that I got completely screwed over by my client and this experience almost made me quit designing custom furniture all together here's a perfect example of why you shouldn't listen to people on the internet normally this is a process that I follow on every single build so I wasn't expecting it to go so wrong when I select my boards for each build I will choose the absolute best looking ones for the areas that are seen the most in this case it's the headboard or as we say in Australia Bed Head which I was recently told by one of my North American patrons that bed head means something different over there I didn't realize at this point that I was about to completely mess these boards up all because my original idea didn't work this bit actually ended up taking three times as long because of this screw-up and took me on a journey that I seriously wasn't expecting the wood I'm using in this build is walnuts and has been supplied by Britain Timbers I'll leave a link below to their website if you want to find out useful information about different Timber species [Music] so I mentioned my clients screwed me over on this piece this all happened back in 2019 and the client wanted a simple elegant design that was one of a kind at this point I'd been designing complicated pieces and was eager to introduce designs that were subdued and easier to build and in all honesty I think it's more of a challenge to create something simple than it is to create something complex music is a great example of this take the Beatles on paper their songs are fairly simple but writing songs as catchy as theirs is not an easy task now I'm not going to get into a debate about the Beatles like a certain popular woodworker did recently I absolutely love the Beatles you two on the other hand I mean what kind of a name is The Edge anyway I'd only been in business for a few years at this point and wasn't fully aware of all the red flags to look for when first chatting with a client which includes being manipulated into lowering your price changing your terms and conditions and getting overly excited before a deposit has been paid I'd fallen for all of these in the past but wasn't aware that my excitement about this project would eventually make me want to reconsider custom furniture all together I got to work on a piece that was aimed at being one of my best I came up with a bunch of iterations and after spending way too long on the final design I finally presented it to the client who absolutely loved it until I told him the price after some arming anaring he told me he'd get back to me and I never heard from him again at this point I was mostly annoyed by the fact that I could no longer build this design I truly believed in it and desperately wanted the chance to make it fast forward to 2023 and I finally have that chance for a client that I know isn't going to mess me around a client who has an appreciation for this design a client who also agrees that the edge is a ridiculous name for a guitarist yes that client is me now I tend to approach my builds a little backwards at least I think I do anyway whenever I design a piece I really think of how to make it until the design is done which does present some problems as I then need to reverse engineer the whole build process which can be complicated but in my opinion this is a good thing because designing pieces based on your current skill level as a maker can limit you to the things you already know which may stop you from developing new skills now sometimes I get excited during the design phase and come up with ideas that are challenging and unique and other times I come up with ideas that aren't even possible just like this one so I'm about to attach the leg to the side rail of the bed but as per usual I've made this joint very complicated but I think I've come up with a solution for it so come into my office and I'll show you what I'm talking about okay so let's pull up a drawing of the leg and rail detail so as you can see here the join between the leg and the rail is curved now this isn't an impossible joint to create in fact you'd be able to make a perfect fit with some carefully made templates but that's not actually the problem here you see if the rail wants to expand it contracts and I should say it's going to be a very minimal amount over a small width like this rail but if it wants to expand or contract then we're going to have a real issue because due to the curves the slightest expansion or contraction in this rail will be obvious as we'll want to separate from the leg resulting in a failed joint so instead of making the join with a curve like this I'm going to make the join a flat like this now if there is any movement in the rail then because the joint is flat there's less chance of separating especially because I'm using a PVA glue which has some Flex to it but this isn't the detail that I'm after because after all this curved joint is one of the main features of this bed so I'm going to create a 10 millimeter leg cap that's the profile that I'm after and it simply glue it onto the existing leg being careful not to add any glue over the join this not only gets me the look that I'm after but also gives me a solid joint and it also allows the leg to protrude slightly from the rest of the bed which is another cool detail okay let's get back to it so I've actually created two separate leg templates for this bed one is the finalized shape of the leg and the other is what you see here with a flat spot that will neatly join to the side rails allowing a solid connection and I can simply create the flat spot with my jointer normally I'd use my panel saw for this process or I'd use my slab Master for flattening boards but understandably these are some specialty tools that not everyone has to me woodworking has always been about creatively coming up with different ways to make a process work I know I have a bunch of fancy tools but like you I could easily drop 100 Grand in any tool shop faster than you can say I need to make a river tape being able to use what you have to get the job done is just part of the process a good example is using clamps for an extra long glue up like this bed frame understandably not everyone has a three meter long pipe clamp like this but realistically you don't need one if you have parallel clamps you can easily rotate the head of the clamp at one end so one drawer is facing up and the other is facing down then simply use another parallel clamp to join them together this method works for Quick Grip clamps as well as smaller pipe clamps but one thing I will recommend if you're accustomed to pipe clamps and you do large scale work is to purchase a longer pipe for the clamp it does make life a lot easier in the long run particularly if you're running a professional shot normally when you're clamping pieces together you want to add clamps to the top and bottom of the join to help with even clamping pressure otherwise the pressure of your clamp can make your work bow towards the clamp but because the shape of this bed is a little awkward it's difficult to get a clamp underneath so I've simply super glued some Timber strips just below halfway on each side of the leg join this will help to disperse the clamping pressure Across The Joint more evenly and while that dries I'll begin Milling up the rest of my material I have to say that up until this point of the build I've been thinking back on this experience from 2019. to be honest I think part of me was still somewhat bitter about the whole thing but then I realized that I learned one of the most valuable lessons I'd ever learned since starting my business [Music] I began to realize that there is a serious issue when it comes to the furniture making industry and that is potential clients expect a design before they put money down which makes total sense I mean why would you spend money on something that doesn't exist yet the problem is it takes time to come up with a design and there's no guarantee the client will go through with it I figured there had to be a better way to not only get paid for my design time up front but also a way to lock my client in from the very beginning and in all honesty the answer was simple as there's a method that design companies use that can also work with us Woodworkers I actually experienced this with a comp company that created my first website where basically they charged me for the design of the website up front then if I chose to go ahead I would put down a deposit for the work to begin on building the site now the reason why this works is because I wasn't just getting one design I was getting multiple designs that then gave me the chance to choose what I wanted I implemented this method into my business in 2019 and it changed everything there was no more wasting time with jobs that wouldn't go over the line plus I was getting paid to come up with designs which meant I could spend more time honing the perfect piece for my clients I actually have a detailed video all about this process over on patreon I also go into detail about the difficult task of finding out your clients by just during your first conversation I'll leave a link below to that video and a bunch of other videos you might be interested in the links will show you a preview and if you're interested you can watch the whole thing over on patreon speaking of which it's thanks to the support of all of these amazing people that allow me to focus on making more videos now the component you see me working on here is the front Rail and it has somewhat of a traditional design to it but that curve in the center actually serves a purpose it allows more surface area for the center rail to attach to you'll see that come together later I decided to use vestal's knockdown connectors for this bed as delivery access for this piece is a little difficult and these connectors do provide a solid join the method that I'm about to use here does present some complications and involves some serious forethought you may have noticed earlier when I was marking out the legs that I have a decent size off card but that's not going to waste I've intentionally ordered my board at this size so I can get three legs now obviously you've already seen me glue two of the legs to the side rails but this third leg will be used as a leg cap that will get glued to the existing legs as I mentioned earlier the reason why I wanted all the legs to come out of the same boards is because I wanted grain and color consistency the last thing I want is for the join between the leg and the cap to be an obvious one but Walnut can present issues as it's notorious for sapwood which is a much lighter color to the chocolate brown Walnut is known for the differences in these colors would make the joins noticeable and even though I've marked out my best faces the further you cut into a board the more chance you have of exposing underlying sapwood now there was certainly some sapwood on one face of this board but luckily I had the forethought to dodge it all when I was marking out my leg templates I just wish I had this level of forethought when it came to the headboard [Music] so I've been looking forward to gluing on this leg cap since starting this build but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous a lot can go wrong here I mean for those that don't know when you glue two pieces of wood together they like to slide around which in certain instances is okay but not here this glue up needs to be perfect and the way I'm going to achieve this is with dowels I'm able to use the Domino hole to drill through the leg into the cap giving me two locating points being a very careful not to drill through the cap because drilling through the leg cap at this point would most likely make me question everything and I don't just mean on this build I mean in life in general like why did I choose his career if I can't drill a simple hole and what would have happened if I paid more attention in class could I have tried harder what did my high school Crush really mean when she called me an idiot is the universe truly infinite and the space aliens could see Earth from 65 million light years away does that mean they'd be able to see dinosaurs um good thing I didn't drill through that cap this down needs to be glued into the leg ensuring that it doesn't protrude into the Domino hole on the other side then I simply use an MDF Packer to cut the right depth for the dowel to fit into the leg cap you'll notice that I'm not applying any glue over the join where the leg meets the rail and this is to avoid any issues with movement if that rail does want to expand and contract it's not hindered in any way by the leg cap I mentioned that I was nervous about this step and rightly so I feel like these nerves allow you to cautiously approach a step with a heightened sense of concentration this allows me to pick everything that can go wrong and eliminate the possibility of that happening and it worked because this step turned out the way I was hoping it would this actually serves as a good example because I wasn't nervous about the next step and I feel that some extra concentration would have stopped me from making a decision that involves a ton of extra work [Music] thank you it's the obvious details that get little attention this is the Trap that I fell into when routing the edge details for the bed realistically speaking there's only so many edge profiles that I can choose from but each one it serves a different purpose I like to think that the edge profile whether it be round over or a chamfer is where you can give your piece some personality picking the correct profile wasn't the issue here is I knew exactly what I wanted to go with but not knowing where to stop resulted in way more work and in my opinion could have looked better if I hadn't done this basically I should have stopped the edge profiles just before the join where the leg meets the rail these two transition points mean a lot of filing and pairing to make the two different round overs meet this would have looked better if I had given it more thought now once upon a time this is something that would have really annoyed me and if you can't already tell I'm a bit of a perfectionist which means if my piece doesn't turn out the way I want it to then it wears on Me In fact when I was younger I wouldn't be able to get mistakes out of my head and I would consider myself a failure these days I'm experienced enough to know that mistakes are simply a new lesson to learn understandably this Edge detail isn't a big deal but I'm sure the younger me would have over thought it unfortunately this is the mindset of a perfectionist if it's not perfect it's a problem but being a perfectionist does have its benefits in the fact that it allows me to think outside the box and come up with different solutions to make ideas work which brings me to my next idea that not only saved a bunch of time but in my opinion looks pretty good too [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] as I just mentioned it's the obvious details to get a little attention but sometimes there are details that get no attention at all I've always been a fan of hidden details on a piece of furniture details that aren't seen from the outside but surprise you when you look a little deeper the slats of a bed are usually a second thought or not even a thought at all I'm certainly guilty of this and I'm not saying that my version is anything special in fact what I'm trying to do here is create the simplest way I can possibly think of to position the bed slats into place by using this jig the holes that I'm drilling out will perfectly fit the width of the bed slats and stop them from moving around I can then use a template to drill out holes in one side of the bed then by flipping the template over I can drill out the same hole pattern on the other side of the bed the dowels will then hold each of the slats into place I do think this looks neat and it acts as somewhat of a feature to look at every time I change the bed sheets but if you really want to see a hidden detail that will take you by surprise then you need to check out the works by the Australian Furniture maker Jeremy from JD Lee Furniture his attention to detail is incredible and I'm a big fan of his holistic approach to furniture making and design his ability to get the most out of every component is inspiring which is one of the many reasons why Jeremy is one of my favorite Furniture designer makers out there I'll leave a link to his Instagram below now the process that I'm going to attempt next wasn't so easy you may actually recognize it from one of my past videos back when I didn't do voice overs its complexity seemed to create some confusion so hopefully I'll be able to shed some light on this unusual technique now the bed is technically finished at this point I see this as a blank canvas where I can get creative and turn this headboard into a truly One of a Kind piece [Music] this is one of the coolest router tricks I know but unfortunately this entire build is about to take a turn for the worse and where my earlier advice of selecting the best boards for the best areas is about to slap me in the face I have my router attached to a shop-made radius jig which is going to allow me to make the curved template I'm after I'm using a six millimeter router bit to cut two sides of a circle these will eventually fit perfectly back together but this is where things get a little confusing you can see me routing out the circle template one side of this template is going to be the cutout in the headboard and the other side is going to get transferred to another piece of wood that will fit back into the headboard cutout the problem is the outside of the router cut and the inside of the router cut are at a different radius to one another as the thickness of the router bit has removed valuable material the trick here is to replace the material that was removed by the router and I'm going to do this by planning a piece of wood that's exactly the same thickness is the router bit I can then simply glue the six millimeter wooden strip onto one side of the template filling in the material that was removed by the router I now have a perfect positive and negative curved template that's ready to be transferred onto the headboard foreign it's kind of strange looking back on this footage because I had no idea at this point that I was about to ruin the best two pieces of Walnut I had for this bed and the worst part is that I had no other material to fix it but I guess the bonus is that I now get to play with fire [Music] I'd been excited about this step for months and as I said earlier the perfectionist enemy likes to plan out all the potential pitfalls before they happen I knew that these boards would walk due to the heat so I've used some oversized Walnut off cuts from another job I decided on Walnut because I ran tests on some different Woods before going ahead which didn't give me the look that I was after I noticed on White Oak and Tasmanian Oak that the wood wanted to split more than with the Walnut I'm gonna be honest it's a little painful setting Walnut on fire here in Australia Walnut is one of the most expensive Woods you can buy so setting it a light feels like I should be sent to the Woodworkers naughty corner but you're about to see just how cool it looks so this has actually turned out better than expected it's got the exact sort of detailing that I was after because I didn't want to get any splits in the wood I really just wanted that sort of scale effect and for the fire to pronounce the grain a little bit more now off camera I used the brush from my shop dustpan to wipe down the Surfs a little bit and get rid of any loose charring so I think it's pretty safe to say that brush is now ruined but whatever also off camera I applied a coat of fiddy's hard wax oil in a matte finish and that was in the hopes that it would stop any charring from coming off on your fingers which it worked incredibly well I was not expecting that actually which is why I did it off camera but yeah very happy with that result so the next step from here is to flatten the back sides of these boards because of all the heat that was introduced it's actually warped towards a little bit it's not a big deal but Next Step going forward all right [Music] [Applause] so even though the charring effects had turned out exactly the way I wanted I had a sneaking suspicion at this point that it wasn't going to work with the bed design but I continued to push forward as I was still hopeful and after all this was the last thing to complete on the bed before I could call it finished and begin applying the oil what I didn't know is that this was actually just the beginning of the bed build you can see that I'm using the template I made earlier to get the exact radius I need to be able to connect the charred wood to the headboard I'm using one of my smaller pattern bits so I don't remove all of the material at once the last thing I want to do here is remove too much and Chip the charred face thanks to my sneaking suspicion earlier I decided not to commit to any fixings at this point I'm going to use a less permanent solution to attach the pieces together and that's just using tape and super glue as each piece began to slowly come together my concern for the overall look of the bed began to increase but I still had the voice in the back of my mind telling me that everything is going to be fine and that I just need to stop worrying but once fully assembled I realize that the voice in the back of my mind is an absolute jerk and was completely wrong okay so it's all done but I hate it I mean I don't know why but it just doesn't look the way that I thought it would look so I don't know check it out so this just doesn't look right to me I'm going to set this camera up on a tripod so I do think this is a great technique I mean it turned out exactly the way that I wanted it to but it just doesn't fit this piece I think it's too intense I'm pretty annoyed right now that I've just used my two best Boards out of all of this Walnut and put two massive cutouts in them but I know it's like six o'clock on a Friday night so I think I'm just going to go home and have a think about how to fix this and hopefully have an answer by tomorrow so after I picked my ego up off the floor I went home had a beer or two and managed to come up with two more ideas um okay maybe it was three or four beers so I had one easy idea and one ridiculously complicated idea and seeing that I was getting pushed for time I decided to go with the easier more subdued idea at this point I'm grateful that I didn't throw out these off carts as they are needed for this idea you may have seen me do this textured detail before except this time I'm using an arbor Tech ball gouge to try and get a more consistent textured effect it's kind of strange how much thought goes into a pattern that's supposed to look completely random but basically the way I'm achieving this look is to create one indent then cross-section it and repeat in random areas around the working area now I do have a better feeling about this option but I still have no idea if it's going to work not until it's all together anyway and the reality is I'm starting to get annoyed about how long this bed is taking as it should have been finished already and I'm Keen to start on my next project which is my interpretation of a rubo workbench so be sure to subscribe if you're Keen to see that video one of the sneaking suspicions that I'm having while creating this textured detail is that I've done this before it's nothing new and the whole reason for originally doing that charred wood effect is because I hadn't used it on my furniture before I wanted this bed to be different and I'm beginning to feel like it's just another one of my pieces this looks way better to me I know that the texture detail is still pretty intense but I think the fact that everything is the same color really helps to tie it all in together but like I said earlier I did have a complicated version of this headboard design and I don't think it'd be one of my videos unless I over complicated things so let's get into it this is a steam box and its sole purpose is to help bend wood into shapes that aren't normally possible without this process [Music] now I think it's safe to say that I've given up on my time frame at this point even though I like the simple texture detailing I just created I feel like this next idea is going to be worth the extra time I've managed to use a bunch of offcuts that I've machined down to just over three millimeters thick now thin pieces like this are usually pretty flexible but I'm going to be bending these beyond their usual breaking point so this process is essential exposing wood to steam in a controlled environment like a steam box helps to plasticize the wood by softening the lignin allowing the wood to bend into unusual shapes once the wood cools it stays in its newly formed shape keeping in mind there will be some spring back but you're essentially reforming the grain structure of the wood I have a video explaining this entire process on my patreon if you're interested the form I'm using to create the bends is the exact same shape as my headboard with rough markings of where I want to clamp the Walnut strips and just when you think it can't bend anymore it just keeps going [Music] [Music] blue [Music] I'm normally fairly calm during glue UPS maybe I can put that down to experience but this glue up was freaking me out there's still so much that can go wrong and I've officially reached the point of no return a mistake now would mean having to redo the bends which isn't something I'm too keen on I'm using a two to one resin called techno glue this sets hard which is important as I don't want any Flex in these bent wood strips white glue isn't going to match too well with Walnut so I'm adding in some brown oxide trying to match the color of the finished Walnut not the raw colored Walnut it's important to note that I've pre-finished the insides of each of these strips with fitties oil obviously not oiling any areas where I need the glue to bond this is a step that's going to make life a lot easier later on as it's going to be almost impossible to apply finish once everything is glued up I've added in some dowels to help locate each strip into place and then wrap the glued areas in some plastic roll to stop the glue from getting everywhere and to stop the strips from getting stuck to the form I originally thought that I was only going to make three main curves to this headboard but realized it needed another one and then another one I think it's safe to say that this bed has not only exceeded my expectations but it's turned out to be one of the coolest pieces I've ever made foreign [Music] woodworking provides time to reflect whether you like it or not I think that's why I've never really met a highly strong woodworker we all seem pretty down to earth and as I had plenty of time to reflect during this piece I couldn't help but think about how we Face challenges throughout our careers and our lives the Journey of this bed started years ago that left me feeling angry ripped off and disrespected the fact that I spent my time and energy trying to create the perfect design for someone only to never hear from them again was defeating but the reality of being a business owner means that you need to adapt otherwise you'll never push forward what started out as defeat turned into the biggest and most successful change I made to my business learning to charge my designs up front changed everything and I owe it all to that client the process of building this piece was supposed to be simple but it evolved into something that was not only challenging but also allowed me to develop a new skill set [Music] everything [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Pedulla Studio

Views: 54,055

Keywords: Sculpted Wooden Cabinet, sculpted furniture, sculpted, wooden cabinet, wooden, cabinet, cabinetry, sculpture, carved, custom made, festool, woodworking, handmade, Furniture, wood, how to make, how to build, DIY, maker, woodwork, artisan, interior design, bespoke, build, timber, custom design, handmade furniture, hand made, custom, Furniture maker, cabinet maker, builder, coffee table, woodworking projects, woodworking ideas, bed, custom bed, steam bending, bent laminations, custom made furniture

Id: 5h5qkwCMkvA

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023