It can be purchased ready-made in the store, and you can do it yourself from any available materials. In this article we will look at the important points of making a metal bed yourself.
Features of the material
The peculiarity of the metal is its:
durability;- resistance to mechanical damage;
- resistance to negative factors;
- aesthetic appearance;
- the ability to give metal any shape and design.
To make a metal bed with your own hands, you need to be able to work with the material , know the intricacies of making furniture items, have patience and have some free time.
Metal furniture pleases users with nobility, luxury and elegance. In addition, these products differ:
- environmental friendliness;
- hygiene;
- light weight;
- fire safety.
Help : metal beds will add special chic and luxury to the bedroom. They are suitable for both classic styles (Provence, country) and modern ones (minimalism, hi-tech).
Making a rectangular box
To make the base of the bed, you must first make a rectangular box from boards. To do this, you need to lay out a rectangle on the floor, checking the evenness of the corners between the sides. Under no circumstances should distortions be allowed to occur. To align the corners at 90 degrees, it is recommended to use a construction square.
To connect structural elements, it is advisable to use metal corners; they are secured using confirmations or self-tapping screws. For reliability, the joints must be coated with wood glue before assembling the frame. To make the product quite aesthetically pleasing, the heads of the screws need to be slightly recessed into the wood. It is advisable to treat all places where wooden parts are cut with sandpaper or a grinding machine before starting to assemble the structure.
The holes for confirmations at the ends can be made slightly larger than on the plane of the wood, this will increase the reliability of the fastening. The length of the self-tapping screw should not exceed the total thickness of the parts being connected, otherwise the tip of the fastener will come out when screwed in and ruin the appearance of the product. In addition, the protruding end of the screw can damage the upholstery of the bed or even cause injury to a person. If the size of the bed is large (double bed), then for reliability you need to make a central partition.
Drawing of a double bed
It’s worth starting work by making a drawing. If you understand such subtleties, you can make an individual project for your future bed.
Any metal bed will consist of the following elements :
- frame;
- frames;
- footboards and headboards;
- legs;
- fasteners.
Before you start making a drawing, you need to select:
- bed size . The dimensions of the bed are a purely individual choice. If you are going to make furniture for a child’s room, you should give preference to single-seat products. If you want to make a bed for a married couple, you should choose one-and-a-half or double models;
- mattress . You can purchase it in advance ready-made and then calculate the dimensions of the sleeping place, or you can order an individual production of an orthopedic mattress according to your personal dimensions;
- design . Furniture design is selected depending on the overall interior of the room.
Advice : if you have problems with drawing, you can download a ready-made diagram of a metal product on the Internet.
Sizing
Before manufacturing, it is necessary to determine the dimensions of the bed (width, height, length) in accordance with the purpose and dimensions of the room, the parameters of the furniture located in the room (bedside tables, cabinets).
Typical beds are divided into single beds, reaching a width of 0.8-1 m, one-and-a-half (1.4-1.5 m), double (1.6-2 m). However, it is possible to manufacture furniture according to an individual project with dimensions tailored to the purpose and size of the owners. It must be taken into account that the length must exceed the person’s height by 30 cm. The standard length is 2 m, the range option is 1.91-2.13 m.
It is important to determine the height of the furniture. According to this parameter, beds are divided into:
- low;
- medium height;
- tall.
Iron bed designs
Also, before making a bed, you need to decide on the type of its design. It can be:
- Forged Products. They are distinguished by elegance, nobility and luxury.
Such beds are considered works of art and have artistic value (if the product is made by hot forging). Making forged furniture with your own hands is quite difficult.Here you need to have certain skills, tools and you need to be able to work with hot metal. It is easier to make a forged bed using the cold forging method, when the metal does not heat up, but deforms when cold. Such products will not be distinguished by elegance, but will have high technical characteristics;
- welded structures . In this case, you need to be able to work with a welding machine. Products made by welding are more suitable for modern trends, for example, Art Nouveau.
Possible difficulties at work
The process of assembling a bed itself is not difficult for a person who has already worked with metal before. You must have basic skills in cutting and welding metal, drilling holes in it, and fastening bolts. If you do not have such skills, it is better to practice in advance on individual pipes, rehearsing their cutting and welding.
We recommend that you read: How to choose a pipe cutter for installing copper pipes
The fact is that the bed is a three-dimensional structure, all parts of which are easy to assemble separately, but installing them together can create some difficulties. For example, welding the last corner is considered the most difficult step in assembling a frame. At the same time, three corners are already ready, the structure is quite weighty and voluminous.
Another challenge is painting the bed. All its sides should look aesthetically pleasing. To do this, you either need to paint each part separately, which will take a lot of time, and then dry all the parts and only then assemble them. Or you can paint the finished structure, but then you will have to protect the slats, if any, as well as the floor, walls and surrounding surfaces from paint.
A beginner in assembling furniture may encounter problems such as a lack of necessary parts, lack of necessary tools, and incorrectly selected dimensions of each part. For example, there is a danger of cutting off a larger section of pipe than necessary. The part will already be damaged.
It is important! It is recommended to buy parts with a reserve of 1-2 pieces. Trim them also with a margin, since after the trimming process comes sanding, which also reduces the size. Before assembly begins, all parts must be adjusted to each other.
Tools and materials
Before making a metal bed with your own hands, you need to evaluate your capabilities, familiarize yourself with the variety of models and types of designs. As a rule, it is quite possible to make most models on your own, even if you are new to this field.
For the workflow you need to prepare the following tools :
grinder;- welding machine;
- drill;
- roulette;
- square;
- file;
- metal brush;
- sandpaper;
The following materials will be useful to us:
- sheets of metal;
- rods;
- paints and varnishes;
- primer for metal surfaces;
- tassels.
If you make a forged product using the cold forging method, you will need to add the following tools :
- snail. With its help you can create spiral patterns;
- gnutik. It is necessary for bending metal at different angles;
- flashlight. With its help you can create products that resemble lanterns;
- twister It is intended for twisting rods;
- wave. With its help you can make wave-like patterns.
To make your own metal sleeping bed, you can also use wire and round rolled metal from :
- gland;
- brass;
- become;
- galvanized metal.
Assembling the base for the bed
To make a base for a mattress, you need to take wooden slats, cut them to the length of the side and end elements of the frame, and then screw them with self-tapping screws to the box from the inside. Slats will then be attached to these slats. The recommended seating depth of the mattress is 50 mm, to this depth you should add 20 mm (thickness of the slats), you get 70 mm. Accordingly, you need to measure 70 mm from the top of the workpiece and attach support bars at the marks.
The slats can be made from the same slats that were used to make the support beams, only now the slats will need to be cut not to the length, but to the width of the bed. The slats are attached to the support strips with self-tapping screws from above, with a pitch of no more than 150 mm. If the lamellas could not be found, then they can be made from plywood with a thickness of at least 20 mm.
To ensure that the load distribution during bed operation is uniform, it is advisable to lay a plywood panel on the slats and place a mattress on top of it. Another practical option is to attach the slats to the base with maximum frequency, that is, in increments of 10 to 40 mm. In this case, you can do without using a plywood panel.
How to make a frame and weld a metal bed?
So, the manufacture of a metal bed is carried out in the following sequence:
The footboard and headboard are made . To do this, we take pipes from metal profiles and make blanks from them, according to the existing product diagram.- These blanks are then laid out on a flat and smooth surface and fastened with a welding machine . At this stage of the work process, it is necessary to constantly check the evenness of the product with a level.
- Now we take a channel and an angle grinder and make brackets on which the product frame will be attached.
- The backrest and frame are connected with a continuous welding seam , at a distance of 35 cm from the floor.
- Now we prepare the material for the frame . We cut the steel channels into the required dimensions.
- We connect the channels with corners.
- We mount the frame . We set the backrests in a vertical position and make markings for installing the frame. We drill the necessary holes in the product. At this point, the main assembly of the bed is complete.
- Next, we proceed to welding the grating under the mattress .
- Now we install the backs on the legs and insert the plugs into the open parts of the pipes.
Attention : to give the product a noble appearance, seams and protruding elements must be cut off with a grinder and processed with a grinder.
Section No. 4: sheathing
The steel “skeleton” is certainly very strong and stable, but it cannot be called particularly beautiful. It lacks coziness, and I used particle board to give it to the finished structure. For the purpose of decoration, this material will cope quite well, since the load-bearing functions have been removed from it.
Range of laminated particle boards with finished edges
My actions:
Scope of work on decorating a metal bed
- I screwed elongated thin laminated chipboard panels to the sides of the frame with M6 furniture bolts 7 cm long . At the same time, their finished edges were raised above the structure by several centimeters, due to which small walls were formed;
- A wider panel was similarly attached to the front part of the frame in such a way that its lower edge dropped almost to the floor;
- At the back, where the pillows would presumably lie, I installed a wide canvas, which also forms the headboard of the bed;
I recommend pre-upholstering the back panel with foam rubber and covering it with fabric. This will make it much more convenient for you to lean on it during operation.
- placed an orthopedic mattress in the resulting box , on which all the work on assembling the bed from a profile pipe was completed.
Frame covered with laminated chipboard panels, with an orthopedic mattress placed inside
Of course, you can choose other materials for cladding, or even leave the steel uncovered and simply decorate it using other methods. Everything is in your hands, and the manifestation of originality in this case is only welcome.
A profile pipe can make an aesthetically pleasing bed even without particle board covering
Finishing
To give the bed a noble appearance, finishing is carried out. An anti-corrosion coating is applied to the metal, all seams are cleaned of slag using a metal brush or grinder .
Next, the product is polished and primed. Primer treatment improves the adhesion of paints and varnishes to surfaces. Next, the product is varnished or painted. The choice of paint largely depends on the overall interior.
If the room is designed in a high-tech or minimalist style, you should give preference to monochrome colors. For classic motifs, dark or light shades are more suitable.
Advice : if you are serious about furniture for the bedroom, try making a dressing table, bedside table or changing table. You may also be interested in a wardrobe or beds made of timber, solid wood, pallets, chipboard and boards.
Now it's time to start decorating the product.
The easiest way is to level the surface of the wood with fine-grained sandpaper or a sanding machine, treat it with stain and varnish in 2-3 layers (the next layer is applied only after the previous one has dried, this will avoid cracking of the coating).
If pine boards are used to assemble the product, then there is no need to use stain. Due to the high resin content, pine may change its appearance - called tiger stripes will appear on it. It is enough to treat wood of this type with varnish.
If the master plans to upholster the bed with soft fabric, then for the work he will need the appropriate material, a furniture stapler, and staples. It is advisable to place thin foam rubber under the fabric and attach it with curly nails. You can cover not only the external, but also the internal elements of a wooden structure with fabric, this will reduce the likelihood of contamination of the mattress.
