One of the most critical things with BONs is the pitch of the nails. The closer the pitch, the more nails there are, the more your weight is distributed, and therefore the more comfortable you are likely to be. Most of the plans available were from college websites, based around physics projects. These suggest a 1" or 25mm nail pitch. There aren't any definite figures for professional websites, but 2", 3", and even up to 6" pitches are mentioned.

The overall size of the BON is also the subject of discussion, and seems to vary from something around the size of your back, to a full size single bed. Normal 6" or 4" steel nails seem to be the popular choice for colleges, although some sites recommend stainless steel nails.

I built my BON from 1800 x 600 x 18mm MDF and opted for 90mm x 3.75mm Stainless Steel annular ring nails. Initially I decided to build mine on a 30mm pitch, which would have required up to 1200 nails. However, a last minute change of plan meant that the pitch was changed to 34mm. The technical reason for this is that the ruler I used to mark out the holes was 34mm wide, and it made marking out much much easier! This reduced the amount of nails to 944, which pushed my design a bit closer to a professional one.

I debated over a square grid for the nails, or an offset one, and came to the conclusion that either would make no difference physically. However, an offset grid looks nicer! I took the decision to make the bed in two halves for several reasons. Firstly, it would be the only way that I could get the wood home with the size boot that I've got. It would also make transporting it around later a lot easier. Storage becomes easier and a lot safer if the two halves are laid face to face. It is also more manageable to work on at that size too. Thankfully B&Q offer a free cutting service.

My first, naive thoughts were that this whole exercise would cost a couple of quid, and take a couple of hours to knock together. Wrong! The marking out alone took a couple of hours! And that was just for one half of the bed. After the first half was marked, every point was dot punched, then pilot drilled. To save time on marking out the second half, I clamped the two bits of board together, and used the pilot drill to mark the second piece.

The reason for the pilot holes is two fold. Firstly to make it easier to bang the nails through, and secondly to ensure that the holes are all strait and parallel. (It also ensures that you don't blunt the nails as you do it). Using nails 3.75mm diameter, I thought initially that a 2.5mm drill bit would be sufficient. However, there was still a hell of a lot of resistance when banging the nails in, and the exit holes are not exactly very neat. Luckily, I only did this for one half. On the other half I used a 3.2mm drill bit, and that made life much easier.

Exactly how to bang all the nails through had me stumped for a while. The challenge was to support the board high enough off the ground for all the nails to go through, whilst keeping the board as well supported as possible. In a flash of inspiration I realised that I had 3 old drawers in the garage which proved to be ideal for this.

Once all the nails were all banged in, another piece of MDF (just 12mm thick this time) was used to cover the base of the bed. This sandwiches the nail heads in place, ensuring they don't move about, and gives a smoother finish to the base. I counter-sunk the screw heads for neatness.

Now that the BON is finished, I'm really proud of it. It looks very impressive, as well as very scary. So far, though, I have not had a go on it. My experiences of 'using' the bed will be the subject of another article on here shortly.