so I have been looking into this a little more for you.
so the fibre glass route did not work, any reason why not, i did not suggest to use fibres just resin, after this type up i will source a picture for you so you can have some ideas to try.
so first up is a simple rebate cut section of 50mm celotex, note celotex not polystyrene.
I like the celotex as it has the simple foil sheet on both faces making it sealed nice and tight, now starting with the basics we can simply varnish the cut edge this allows for a harder working face than before from the open end of the foam.
you could also seal it with a single layer of tin foil tape that is used normally with the celotex sheets, i personally would also like to add a ceramic tile edge bead to it as well so we have a great edge to work the frames with, this basicly means what we are left to do is to make the edge of the celotex , one bee eating it, proof and harder wearing for us.
to increase penatration of the varnish, or as i prefere here ronseal wood hardener, we can attack the edge with a single 75mm nail to make some holes or perforations to allow the hardener to penatrate better
of course what we are looking at does not as such have the bead added but the ideas there for you
next up is to change from added wood hardener into resins, i have used here cheap as chips fibreglass resin, polythingymajig stuff, easter! , thats it easterpoly resin!!!
any way we can use it to penatrate the foam core or we can also remove a section to back fill, here i have dug out a section 25mm wide and 8mm deep and poured in resin to give me a very hard edge the rest is coated several times with resin, the first coat penatrates the other two sit on top
now after this little lot and the fact i have just run out of resin, we will look at timber additions.
just out of intrest a section side will take about 50ml of resin as a base coat and the top coats are around 30ml a time on some thing around 500mm long 50mm wide inc rebate
so what i have done here is drawn a few ideas, i will run through them if you like,
the idea is to add a 12mm layer onto the edge of the celotec sheet to seal it and to allow us to work with older ideas,
SECTION A
so the base was to add the 12mm ply across the top face and a tile edge bead, a block of wood then became the outside edge and super support on the base of the next box is a simple layer of ply 12mm thick and a second one to act as a interlocker and brace at 22mm by 22mm
so no bee space so its scrap
SECTION B
got fancy here tried to use a machined profile to the top layer and an outside edge pieces, got bored and gave up as to complicated
SECTION C
again the idea is to have a rain cover strip on the outside but this one idea will squish every bee going so again scraped
SECTION D
so heres a fairly good basic idea, 12mm ply ripped up to 50mm wide on top of the celotex sheet a piece of timber batton 22mm wide and 30mm high stuck to it to make a support add a tile edge trim and away we go with a top bee space brood box, on the base of the bee super above a single rip of ply 50mm by 12mm and a second piece as the inter locker at 12mm ply by 22mm wide. just to make life a little more complicated though i desided to add outside pieces these were to use a handles and to keep the rain out, the bottom piece was going to be a piece of door arcitrive at 50mm wide and about 18mm thick and the piece above was a section of 12mm ply rippped 30mm wide
so working the glitches out why not try PLAN E
what we have here is sticking to the basics of a section of 12mm ply as a capper. i have then added the tile edge bead and a section of 18mm ply 32mm wide with a strip of 12mm ply on the outside 50mm wide, great fantastic the base of the next box has a single strip of ply 50mm wide and an outside piece 35mm by 12mm, absolutly fantastic that,
shame i forgot the top bee space and the interlocker???????????????
SO PLAN F
F for fed up or fool or flippen eck i have done it ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha
here i have done from the base board up wards so starting from the bottom,
the base is a single piece of celotex with a 50mm 12mm ply rip all the way around it with a 22by 22 mm batton, above it and on all the boxes and supers alike is a single piece of 50mm by 12mmply base with a section of 12mm ply 22 to 23mm wide depending on how wobbly i am when i cut it up!
on the top of the brood box is a simple section run through, again with the 50mm wide 12mm ply capper with a section of tile edge bead on the inside as a frame holder and then a section of timbre 24mm wide by 26mm high batton
then above us again a rip of 50mm wide 12mmply and a 12mmply by 23mm section as the inter lock
i have drawn on the outside in red some rain section handle pieces out of intrest for you
i hope that gives you some more ideas
hedgy