What did you do in the 'workshop' today

[einsteinagogo]

Purchased a digital Lakeland luggage scales, and followed the article in this months BBKA (Feb), drilled holes in the base of my single Hive (colony), and weighed both sides, a combined weight of 39kg. I can now heft/weigh weekly.

 

[dpearce4]

hid the cut wood for 20 more hives in the shed ready to screw glue and treat. Just need to find somewhere to site them full of bees this autumn.

 

[ugcheleuce]

Last night I bought a small table saw, second-hand. It was about half of the price of the cheapest new one, which is about what these things went for on the local second-hand sale web portal. This morning I took some of it apart and cleaned it up. The motor works (I tested it last night). As I was cleaning it, I discovered a whole piece of wood still lodged between the blade and some of the innards, and... two steel screws also fell out. I'm so glad I took the tim to clean it before using it!

Theoretically you can adjust the height of the blade, but it requires turning the table upside down, loosening four knobs, and gently hammering at a very specific point. I think I'll just keep it permanently at a sensible setting. The blade is no longer perfectly perpendicular to the ground, and I don't have enough confidence to open up that part of the saw yet, so I fixed it by raising the one side of the table a bit. The saw is capable of sawing at an angle, but... you don't tilt the saw itself, but you tilt the working surface instead. This allowed me to set the surface perpendicular to the saw blade.

My vacuum cleaner's head doesn't fit over the table saw's dust exist (dang! where's the duct tape?). Although the table comes with a set piece to do cross cuts, it's quite small and short, and there is no railing to allow me to do longer cross cuts, so I'm going to have to think of something. There is a rip cut railing, but no cross cut railing.

Now I'm off to the hardware store in the hope that they have the same type of screws that fix the blade guide to the table -- the previous owner had all but stripped the screw heads and I was lucky to be able to remove it.

The picture below is not my table saw, but a cleaner specimen, so you can see what kind of a saw it is:

And here are the two surprises that I only discovered once I started cleaning it, turned the thing on its head, and removed the blade guide:

.

 

[Hivemaker.]

The picture below is not my table saw, but a cleaner specimen, so you can see what kind of a saw it is:

Looks very much like what they sell over here as a tile cutting saw.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Looks very much like what they sell over here as a tile cutting saw.

I've seen one almost identical last year in B&Q sold as a table saw HM

 

[Erichalfbee]

Hubby is gleefully opening a box containing a brand new shiny saw and attaching it to a workbench ...he's chortling away with happiness.
Time for me to see what I can arrange to collect at the Welsh Convention, then

 

[ugcheleuce]

Looks very much like what they sell over here as a tile cutting saw.

I've seen one almost identical last year in B&Q sold as a table saw HM

It was advertised as a table saw by two different persons, but I'm beginning to suspect that it may be a tile saw. It's motor is only 720 W instead of the more usual entry-level 800 W. And there was tile dust in the duct (but wood dust also).

Anyway, the blade is kaput (unless you want the house to smell like burnt wood)... and removing it is super easy, so I'm off to the hardware store to get a replacement.

 

[Tom Bick]

Such a lovely day to day and all the bees flying I had a couple of hours so I made this from an old pallet. Just need a new apiary for it now.

 

[einsteinagogo]

Such a lovely day to day and all the bees flying I had a couple of hours so I made this from an old pallet. Just need a new apiary for it now.

Tom, that's brilliant!

I'll have to order one from you, for my old knackered gate!

and do you do Garage Doors!!!

Andy

 

[Erichalfbee]

Very good, Tom. Love it

 

[Swarm]

Wicked! That's another beaut, Tom.

 

[Tom Bick]

You will be surprised how easy they are just an old pallet and a router been the only power tool required to make life easy and after that they can be finished with a few hand tools. But more toys the more fun to be had and speed only two hours.

 

[REDWOOD]

Very dappa Tom

 

[ugcheleuce]

This past week I made three honey-frame sized boxes (for 12 frames each) and two honey-frame sized super boxes (for 5 frames each) and two ekes that I can use on any of these boxes to promote them to brood-frame sized boxes. Here is a sample:

I'm not happy with the result because I can't get the boxes squared, despire my best efforts, and because my little table saw can't saw straight or accurate, so that the boxes look good only from a distance. I'll be able to use them, but I'm not happy.

This coming two days I'll make myself a t-MFGH hive (which is my own adaptation of a forgotten hive from before the war).

 

[victor meldrew]

Judicious use of a set square should sort your table saw out
Square the hive boxes by employing a gauge for the diagonals !
VM



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ugcheleuce]

Judicious use of a set square should sort your table saw out

I'm not sure what you mean by a "set square".

Square the hive boxes by employing a gauge for the diagonals !

Perhaps I used the wrong word -- I meant vertically square. If the box is glued and dried, you should not be able to press down on the one corner and see a rocking movement. My boxes are horizontally square -- no problem there. I'd rather have them vertically square and horizontally skew.

I also tried using multiple clamps to hold the box down onto a (hopefully) flat table.

It's a combination of factors, really. The fact that I can't do crosscuts with the table saw, the fact that I don't have a planer or a belt sander, the fact that the wood warps slightly (a fact that was known to me, but the influence of which is much greater than anticipated), and the fact that I have to nail and glue the boxes while they're on their sides (due to the construction of the front/rear walls I can't nail and glue the hives while they're in their normal orientation).

Or, it could just be that I underestimated how much post-preparation is necessary on the sawn wood before assembly (on the Youtube videos, they assemble immediately after sawing, but now I doubt if that's how it works). I suppose if I spend an extra day or three refining, tweaking and nursing the various components after sawing but before assembly, then I can get the boxes better-looking.

I hope the MFGH is as easy to build as it looks on paper.

 

[victor meldrew]

One tip i was given a long time ago was 'Measure twice, Cut once"
VM

 

[madasafish]

I use a tape measure across the diagonals : easy to square by making sure the diagonals are the same length,

I assemble on top of steel sheets on a workbench.

I trial fit dry with no glue before final assembly...

 

[pargyle]

Such a lovely day to day and all the bees flying I had a couple of hours so I made this from an old pallet. Just need a new apiary for it now.

Too much time on your hands ... time the season started ... Lovely bit of arty farty gate though, I'm seriously impressed !! It's not gates that I need at present ... it's blasted fence panels - sadly 6' x 6' pallets don't come along too often.

 

[ugcheleuce]

This evening I sawed the planks for the t-MFGH hive:

What went in there was six 2100 mm x 22x50mm planks and ten 2100 mm x 88x18mm planks. What came out was fifty-nine smaller planks... some of which I glued together and will deal with tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll visit the local bee store and buy me some varroa mesh, because I need to put that in first before I can assemble the rest of the hive.

With regard to the other hive boxes, I determined that they're not that bad after all, and that I only needed to eke out the ekes a bit to make them fit.