I’ve been working on getting a wood bed in the back of the truck. What’s really taken me so long was my indecisiveness in what kind of wood I wanted to use. I looked at using barnwood, rough cut wood, planed hardwood, etc. I ended up just grabbing some common pine at Home Depot for $40 to be done with it. I think I spent more time researching and going to look at material than I have in the bed so far.
I trimmed the board to have seven boards across the bed with the metal strips in between each board with all board showing the same width. I had to set up a goal seek in Excel to get the dimensions figured out. What I came up with is shown below, and no, I did not try and cut the boards to the thousandths of an in., I’m not that uptight. I cut the center boards to 7 in. and the end boards to 6.5 in. with the expectation that I would do a final trim of the end boards.
I used a dato blade on a table saw to cut a recess to sink the metal strips in the boards. To assemble I started with the center board and centered it to the bed. I found a bolt that worked as a spacer to get the boards spaced apart properly. I used a finish nail gun to get everything assembled and held together. I then pulled out the bed, flipped it over, and put an s-ton of screws in.
Now I’m just left with finishing it off…another moment of being indecisive…I can’t figure out what color I want to do. Ultimately, once I have my stain color picked I’m going to finish it off with tung oil to give it some protection and a little bit of sheen.
