My Way Of Making National Supers and Broods

[rae]

Arrgh, I hit post too early on the above, then hit the edit limit. So I'm reposting here:

Oh lordy, all the wood fetishists are out in the open! Yes I'm on arbtalk, but not very much (seems to be very low traffic). I used to be on Arboristsite a lot, and I still dip in when the chainsaw thing gets me going.

I don't have the edger for the Granberg, I just rotate the log. The edger would make it easier, but it would be another bit of kit. I assume that is a great lump of Cedar? Must smell lovely - 2-stroke and cedar chips. That is a serious wood yard you have there - Granberg, bandsaw, and there's a firewood processor somewhere in there....

Anyway, back to the task at hand - the side "handles" for the hives. I'm not bothering to make proper joints for them, butt joints all the way, more than strong enough. I'm using "framing" - I think it is what builders use to frame doors - 1 1/8" thick by 5 1/4" wide.

Tilt the saw over and make the first sloping cut. The "long" edge should be an inch and a half (see here: http://www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/learning/documents/number 4 national hive.pdf)

Then set the saw vertical again (check it with a square, most of the scales on saws are about 5 degrees out), and make the next cut, again giving a "long" edge of an inch and a half:

The cut out a square section, an inch and a half wide. Because the board is 1 1/8", you'll need to trim it to 1", or the handles will stick out:

This is a good illustration that a saw blade is about 1/8" thick - lots of people don't realise this and wonder why their cuts are about 1/8" out - it is because they have assumed the blade has zero width, or have measured from the wrong side of the blade.

You should end up with some lengths like this:

Yes, I know I've made too many of the sloping (bottom) bits! Now you need to cut them to length. To do this, you need to make sure that you measure the gap they are going into - the right length will be the length of you "short" sides, - (2 x the depth of the slots you cut). In my case, the length is 17" - 2 x 3/16 which is 16 5/8". Cut them up, using a 14x12 side to keep them square they're all the same length:

Next step is to use the router to cut the rebates (1/4 x 1/2 in the bottom and 11/16 x 1/2 in the top). Standard stuff. Here is a natty tool from Axminster (only a few quid) that is worth its weight in gold for setting router fences:

One important thing to note with routers. The blade in the above picture will be rotating anti-clockwise. You must always make sure that all of the cutting is being done in a direction that is pushing towards you - if cutting is done by the bit that is going away from you, it will grab the work and fling it forward - with some violence. If you need to cut deeper than the radius of the blade (as the pic is set up to show), do it in two passes. Or get a bigger blade!

Right, that's all of the parts made. Let's start some assembly, starting with some 14 x12s. You'll need more clamps than you think (I use 6) - 14x12s come adrift while clamping all too easily. You'll also need a square, check for squareness constantly, all across the depth of the box. Set the "short" sides to be 1/4" lower than the "long" sides at the bottom of the box. If you've got everything right, this will be perfect at the top. Here are two boxes drying, the handles will go in later:

 

[stephennicholas]

I mentioned on another thread that I could post up some photos and explanations of how I make hive boxes and a few people thought it was a good idea. Once caveat: this method works for me, I'm not the best hive builder in the world (far from it!), but I'm probably not the worst either. Your method might be different! Oh yes, there will be plenty of tool porn in this thread. I know some of you like a good bit of tool porn.

I'm not going to go into the gory details of hive part sizes - Scottish beekeepers has a good reference for the national hive.

I have 6 hives, and hopefully next summer I will still have 6 colonies. Having bought nice cedar hives from T*ornes, I don't have enough supers, as I've ended up buying brood boxes, floors and roofs as we have expanded this year. Honey production on the "new" hives was not great, so they did not need the requisite 3 supers. They will next year. So I need supers, and I will need some more broods for temporary expansion during the swarming season. As such, these don't need to be great quality: summer use only, not too fussed about the thermal characteristics, they don't need to survive winter weather. Shuttering ply is cheap, waterproof and strong. So I use that. I don't see any point in the amateur making cedar hives: cedar in small quantities is very expensive, and the price from T*ornes or others is roughly the same as your material costs. On the other hand, supers made out of shuttering ply are cheap. A sheet can be had for £25 from Travis Perkins and it makes 10 supers. Add another £25 for a big lump of pine (for the handles) and you've got a price of £5 per super. Not bad.

Right, so you've got a ginormous 2400 x 1200 sheet of 18mm ply from Travis Perkins. Somehow you've managed to get it home. You need to make it manageable, because unless you've got a very big table saw with a sliding table, your first few cuts will not be accurate.

Here is my cutting lay out:

Basically I split the sheet into two unequal parts along the length. The bigger bit is 930mm high (2 x 460mm + 10 mm waste), and this will make hive parts vertically - in the diagram I've marked out some super sides and 14x12 sides. The smaller bit can make super parts.

Once you've made the first cut, the subsequent cuts are much easier as the board is manageable. I didn't take photos of this stage, but eventually you end up with a load of hive parts like this:

(Ignore the fact that the parts have slots machined into them, I didn't take photos early on, we'll cover that later). Those piles are 5 14x12 broods and 9 supers.

The key thing to remember about national hives is two dimensions: 18 1/8 inches and 17 inches. The "long" walls of a box are 18 1/8 inches x whatever the height of the bit you are making is. The "short" walls of the box are 17" x (the height - 15/16)".

So the sides of a national super are made of parts:

18 1/8" x 5 7/8" - the "long, deep sides"
and
17" x 4 15/16" - the "short, shallow sides".

Each box you make will require two of each. Yes, if you are a child of the decimal era, doing sums in imperial makes your brain hurt. Thankfully, I have a lot of American tools marked up in imperial, which makes hive building easier.

Time for tool porn. Here's my set up:

It is an old Electra Beckum table saw with the original rubbish fence removed and an Incra TS-LS instead. The Incra is a thing of beauty. At the far end of the photo there is a scale, and the big red lever locks the fence into place. So I dial in a width on the scale, lock the lever, and cut. Repeatable, again and again.

If you pull the fence right back, it exposes the router table. I've got an Elu 1/2" router under there, with enough chuff to do moulding of oak panels - shuttering ply doesn't bother it at all.

The slots that the "short sides" lock into are 4mm deep (if you are using 18mm ply) and 1" in from the edge of the board. Thankfully the router is on a rise/fall mechanism, so getting 4mm is simply a matter of setting it on the tail of a caliper, and dialling it in:

Set the fence distance to an inch from the side of the cutter, and push all of the "long deep" sides though. Remember to get both slots on the same side! At the end you will have a big pile of slotted "long deep" sides...and a lot of chips:

Note the Heath Robinson extraction at the end of the table. This is very important - wood dust does bad things to your lungs over time, and I always wear a decent face mask when doing this stuff. Ear defenders too.

This is how the ply sides fit together. The short sides fit into the slots, forming a box of 18 1/8" (460mm) square.

I'll get some pine in the next few days and we'll make the handles!




(no idea why the forum repeats photos - can this be turned off?)

I'm not seeing any pictures, just icons with red crosses over them. But I am on a no subscription log-in.
Reading comments, I guess the pictures show a large and well-equipped workshop. For people with a small workshop or just a shed to store tools while they work outside, there are alternatives. A track saw (aka plunge saw, rail saw, etc) is best for breaking down sheet goods, especially if you get B&Q, Selco, or whoever supplies your sheet goods to cut to within about 20mm of your sizes so you can trim it down exactly to size and shape instead of relying on their (usually very reliable) staff. You can get accessories for ordinary circular saws to work on generic track. I have corded Makita CS with track accessory and Makita track, but Evolution and many prosumer options are very good. Just make jigs for repitition - I'll be making up to 100 hives (or whatever the proper term is) for my son.
Trend routers, eg T110, are good and the choice of many professional woodworkers. Many woodworks have multiple Trend T110s each with a different bit that remains in the machine. If you need a router, no need for heavy duty (1/2)" joinery router for this work. You can get cheaper than Trend, but I haven't found cheaper is good enough. Elu... that's a blast from the past: I remember them fondly and I don't trust DeWalt corded anymore! Makita's routers are not their best range of tools. DeWalt cordless small router is good, but so is Trend.

 

[ericbeaumont]

icons with red crosses

Reckon that means the post is so ancient that the images are dead, but you do get a round of applause for thread resuscitation!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Reckon that means the post is so ancient that the images are dead, but you do get a round of applause for thread resuscitation!

A banned and a dead member amongst the replies too.

 

[pargyle]

Reckon that means the post is so ancient that the images are dead, but you do get a round of applause for thread resuscitation!

Photos linked to a long deceased web site .. No hope of resurrection although it was clearly appreciated at the time ... 14 years ago ! And some of us are still here !!