Tag: side

DIY: Bed Rail Table

Writ­ten: June 2022

What: A plat­form or table set on the rail­ing of a loft or bunk bed

Sup­plies: Wood, ruler, saw, wood screws, sand­pa­per, drill/driver, wood glue, clamps, wood filler (opt), stain/paint (opt), adhe­sive craft foam (opt)

Time: 1–3 hours depend­ing on skill lev­el and exclud­ing dry­ing time for glue

Process

Wood, mea­sured, designed
Cut prep
Cuts fin­ished, now sand­ing
3 lev­els of sand­ing
Glue!
Glued, placed, clamped. Now wait.
Pilot hole drilling, screw dri­ving, and done! Unless you want to fin­ish it by fill­ing holes and paint­ing

Product Application

It fits!
Took into con­sid­er­a­tion the post
Grabs onto the rail­ing
Move­able
What I’m using it for

Notes:

  • I set mine a lit­tle loose, but if you want it tighter, then you can add craft foam padding. The adhe­sive backed ones would also add a side ben­e­fit of being non-mar­ring when you slide it along the rail
  • Fin­ish­ing the wood table/platform would give it a much more pol­ished look and you can match the paint col­ors. Plus, wood filler would nice­ly hide the screw holes
  • The super skin­ny piece of wood (it was a paint stir­rer) was there to com­pen­sate for the post and pre­vent rock­ing

2022 Ford Maverick Bed Side Rail System

Writ­ten: Feb­ru­ary 23, 2022 — Updat­ed: Decem­ber 30, 2022

  • Cost: $45 (tracks) + $24 (stud fit­tings) + $17 (ship­ping) + $13.50 (screws) = $99.50
  • Bought two 24″ L‑tracks from US Car­go Con­trol along with four L‑track sin­gle stud fit­tings to go with it. There are oth­er sizes, I just opt­ed for the two-foot­ers
  • The Mav­er­ick­’s pre-drilled screw holes are thread­ed and require M8 screws
2ft L‑track with stud fit­tings
Holes do not line up…Sigh… At least they look good

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pre-drilled holes on the Mav­er­ick and L‑tracks do not line up, so I ini­tial­ly planned to drill 2 extra coun­ter­sunk holes in the L‑tracks to make it fit. The tracks sys­tem real­ly does look nice AND are quite light. Accord­ing to the site details, they weigh togeth­er 1.2lbs.

Next issue: the Mav­er­ick has M8 holes, the tracks use 1⁄4″ coun­ter­sunk hard­ware (though I found M6 screws fit bet­ter than the 1⁄4″). So now some holes need widen­ing

**Below is the orig­i­nal post I made using a drill to try and widen the holes in order to accept the M8 screws. It is lengthy and time con­sum­ing and ugly, hon­est­ly. Read on if you like, but ten months after the fact, I found out that all you need is a M8 thread tap and t‑handle tap­ping wrench. Prep­ping to tap the threads for the floor anchors (click me!), I test­ed it on these bed­side rails, and wow. In what took me orig­i­nal­ly a few hours, took maybe 2 min­utes. Plus, it’s MUCH nicer look­ing.

Fits
Still juts out, but if you got cre­ative, you could prob­a­bly make it more flush
If I were to do it again, I’d try the deburr tool to see if I could widen the coun­ter­sink flange
Much clean­er

You might be able to use a cham­fer or a debur­ring tool to try and set the screw flush, but I don’t have those tools yet. Thanks for read­ing! The L‑tracks are still super awe­some, and great qual­i­ty look­ing at them even now. I was able to use them once and they were sol­id sol­id sol­id. How­ev­er, Ford now offers a Cleat Tie Down Kit for $400 if you want some­thing offi­cial**

Orig­i­nal post start

M8 — no fit
1⁄4″
M6 — the most flush
Cut­ting flu­id, eye pro­tec­tion, clamps, drill, bits, scrap wood
Coun­ter­sink bit

After hav­ing fun using pow­er tools to expand the holes, I real­ized that the coun­ter­sink bit I had was too small. Huh.

Be gen­er­ous with lube
Drilling
Coun­ter­sink
Looks good!
Does­n’t fit all the way. Bit too small.

After test-fit­ting it in the truck bed, I returned to hap­pi­ly make holes. This part was fun, and it was awe­some to have suc­cess mak­ing the hole until…

Drilling hole in met­al: SUCCESS!
Uh oh. The open­ing is too small
M8 head is 5/8in or 15.87mm.
Open­ing on the non-cir­cle part is only 10mm. No bit nor rasp could help me

...major prob­lem reached. Because the holes need­ed to be in the wrong part of the track, there was no way to get the coun­ter­sink bit in. That’s not that big of a deal, but the screw not fit­ting in there at all is a huge deal.

Noth­ing worked.

So, Plan B it is. Went back to the truck bed for fur­ther scruti­ny, then planned to enlarge 2 of the holes since they were both just off by maybe half a cen­time­ter. Eas­i­er said than done. Still the issue with too small of a counter sink. This project was becom­ing a total exper­i­men­tal project. Those beau­ti­ful L‑tracks were look­ing quite…worked on.

Widen­ing (5/16 bit is very close to M8 size)
Screws don’t sit flush. Oh well.
Unused mis­take holes. ugh.

Plan C was going to be M8 sized eye­let screws. In fact, I might still do that giv­en that there is one screw hole on either side of the bed with noth­ing it.

Sin­gle M8 hole left on either side

Lots of time, teeth clench­ing, lubri­cant, and met­al shav­ings lat­er, I was sat­is­fied and went to install them.

2 tracks, M8x1.25 25mm screws, 4 wash­ers, 4 studs
Hex sock­et ratch­et dri­ver

YAY!! The screws are absolute­ly not flush, but I decid­ed that I actu­al­ly rather like it since I did­n’t spring for rail end caps and the screw heads act a bit like stops for the stud fit­tings.

Screw holds the stud in place
Easy to move spring loaded stud
Just push and move

Ignor­ing the weird drilled out holes, it looks pret­ty good! Just have to make sure not to hook any­thing to the ends and focus any force near the screw holds.

Pret­ty proud of myself and def­i­nite­ly learned new things today. Like to not brush at met­al shav­ings with your bare hands because lit­tle pieces of met­al in your fin­ger is painful.