Beekeeping - Making Medium Frames (Langstroth)

here we are we're going to make some frames today when I make frames I like to use two before the end pieces like you get three out of this one these need to be six inches and one fourth six and one-fourth inches we're gonna be making these little in pieces all right the first thing we got to do is this needs to be one and three eighths inches so I've got my sauce set up here I'm just going to rub this through and make them one and three inch inches so here we go [Music] all right now another way that you can get these to the 1 and 3 8 inch thickness rather than using the table saw like you saw me doing which looks a little bit dangerous because it probably is with the blade sticking up that high you can use a jointer or a planer or something to slowly Whittle them down to that so let's take a look and do that [Music] position okay the next step in making of these frames these need to be six and one quarter inches long so I've set me up a stop block here at six and one quarter inches now I'm just speeding these through cutting them all right there's all of our pieces they are now what's going to be the right thickness they're the right length all right the next thing we're going to do we're going to cut two channels where you see this pencil Marks here these are not exact I just scribbled these on here so you can see so we're going to cut the Channel all the way through we're going to cut a Channel all the way through all right you can see my little drawing here it's not the greatest in the world all right I just needed it so I have a quick reference when I'm out here in the shop so you can pause the video and take a look at that so what we're going to do as you can see this top notch is three quarter inch but this bottom Notch is only 5 8 inch wide so let's go ahead and do the top one first that's three quarter inch and we're going back to the dado blades so three quarters of an inch is six eighths and as I said before each one of these only so there's one two three four Oh wrong way five six key washer pillow all right now we need to get the fence set up actually we're not going to use the fence I'm gonna use a Tenon jig this thing is awesome because you got to hold these up on their ends so I'll get this the right distance from the blade here and then all we'll have to do is put each one in and run it through and that's what we'll be doing so I'll measure this out real quick and get it set all right the distance we want this is 5 16 away 5 16. now if you refer back to the diagram this should allow us 5 16 ear 5 16 ear with our three-quarter dado in the middle we're going to practice on a piece of scrap first to make sure that it looks good it sits good before we start messing up any real wood foreign little adjustment on the first one the second one came out perfect so now we are ready to cut all right now you can see how this is coming together I have these two let me let me just say first it's always a good idea when you start making these frames to to start out with more than what you're going to need because you're going to make mistakes along the way or there's going to be a knot in the wrong place and the piece is going to fall apart you're going to lose pieces along the way so just since you have to set up everything knock out one part run them all through set up the next thing run them all through instead of it's better to run more than what you're going to need and I did that but I'm quickly running running out of extra so this one the board was warped it started to Cuff I mean this way I don't know if you can tell but that made it really it doesn't look as bad there you go see how thin that ear is compared to the other and it curves so don't think I'll be able to use that I might be able to get a few off this side of it but this side's garbage and then this one just slipped out of my darn hand and it is really screwed up so it is not going to be used for this at all so I think I can get eight once you slice this into individual ears so I mean that screw-up represents eight pieces that I will not be making so that's why I say I'm quickly running out of extras all right next thing to do is to set it up to cut the other one on the bottom side as you can see these ears are going to be one quarter inch each with a 5 8 hole so for 5 8 hole I have to get the dado blade set up from 6 8 down to 5 8. and I'll get all that ready and we will cut the next ones okay these ears are going to be a half inch d look at me half inch drill bit something like that okay something I just realized but a lot of caught this before I did this so these pieces this bottom part is going to end up at 1 and 1 8 inch because you're going to take an in an eighth of an inch off this side and an eighth of an inch off this side to give it these legs like you can see in these examples how they're smaller at the bottom so when we go to put this in the middle it's not really going to be a fourth it's going to be a fourth plus that eighth that we cut off so we have not cut this eighth off yet so we really need this ear to be 3 8 and this ear to be 3 8. then when we cut them down they'll be the fourth later so let's just not get that confused because I don't want to start all over again after I've messed all of these up all right I'm gonna get this set up for 3 8 of an inch away from the blade using a drill bit like we did before because that seems to work really well 3 8. all right drill bit in there all right so that should be 3 8 inch away if we can trust dewalts drill bits come on smaller still needs a little bit of tweaking I'm gonna fine-tooth this bring you guys back I'm sure you don't want to see every painstaking second of this all right I've dialed it in 3 8 3 8. all right time to rock and roll I verified everything it's a half inch deep 3 8 on either side 5 8 in the middle foreign also it's a good idea at this point I just like to draw an arrow on each one so I know where top is and which is bottom since they're slightly different it just makes it easier when you just pick one up real quick and you want to work on it and you don't make any stupid mistakes but it only takes a half second to draw a little arrow on there letting you know where the top is or anything just to let you know time for a little bandsaw got a fence set up here 3 8 of an inch away from the blade we want to take 3 8 inch slices I could do this on the table saw but with the table saw being an eighth inch wide I'm going to lose an eighth inch on every single slice Which is less than ideal but this tiny blade I'll end up getting more pieces out of this let's do it all right trying to work on the B frames today but I have to replace the tires on the bandsaw these were cracking falling apart the blade was slipping all over and it was starting to mess up all the hard work I did to make these pieces just trying to slice them into this was coming on a horse so I got me some new bandsaw tires here we putting those on and getting that all working and going I got the top wheel all cleaned off ready for the tire I still need to clean the bottom wheel up also going to be putting some more cool blocks on this will hold the blade in place and I ordered some new bearings so I can replace these because they squeal really loud I figure while I'm in here I'll replace them all right bandsaw is repaired it's got new bearings new cool blocks to guide the blade and new belts and now it is cutting like a dream I'm getting nine slices out of every one of our boards that we made whereas before I was barely getting seven and they were all screwed up and not straight so let's see how good she cuts [Music] foreign very nice the next thing we got to do is find an example in here the final thing on these ear pieces is that we need to take this eighth inch off this side and this side to make those little shoulders so I've set up my bandsaw here I've got this piece exactly 1 8 inch away from the blade and then I've got this stop block here so that as these come up they'll hit and it'll be the perfect length so just bam flip it over to the other shoulder rinse and repeat a thousand times one thing I just realized earlier this weekend was that I thought I needed 90 of these ear pieces because I needed um nine frames but I'm now realizing that there's two of these on every frame and I wasn't thinking about that before so I really needed like about 180 of these and I think maybe I'm close to that just because I went back and cut some extras after the bank saw the gnarled up some but yeah so you can see in stacks of 10. those are all the ones we got to cut the shoulders on and they got some back there on the back you can see those are ones that are a little boogered up here or there that I don't want to use but if I don't have enough I will use those so I just haven't thrown them away but they're not ideal and that's why they're sitting back there so let's get going [Music] [Music] I'm just gonna freehand these because it's just a tiny little cut I just want to tell you guys be careful because as you can see even though I'm marked every single one of these on the top I still grab the stack and fed the entire stack in the wrong way and cut them on the tops instead of the bottom so I went ahead and cut them on the bottoms too hoping that maybe I could stick some glue in these cracks and fix them I don't know if I'll be able to or not I hope I will I don't think that'd be too bad with a little glue in it because I don't want to lose all 10 of these but be careful pay attention I was just hooking along got to doing a lot of them going fast and next thing you know a whole Stack's done wrong all right one more quick note before we get on to the next pieces all of these pieces that you see there that we are throwing that we have cut off you might be tempted to throw these away but let me tell you I like to say every little thing I can when it comes to woodworking because you never know when you might need a piece that size again I found out these are really good for spreading glue put a little glue in there and then you can use these sticks to to wipe it around you know and then you just pitch them away so I don't throw these away because they're perfect for that I just stick them in a little Ziploc bag and I've got little glue sticks for a long long time until probably I have to do frames again next year so just a little tip foreign I've cut these down they need to be 17 and three quarters inches long so I took that eight foot board and I cut it down and I got one two I got five these are the pieces that we're going to be making here these are the bottoms so they are half inch three quarter inch and 17 and three quarters long so you get your 17 and three quarters there the board is a three-quarter inch thick board so there's your three-quarter and we're just going to cut off half inch slices like these and get as many as we can get out of here I have my fence set like I said a half inch away so we can take half inch slices off this board I have the Blade Set just high enough to clear this board not overly so we're just gonna take these one by one now one thing you have to be aware of when you cut like this is that you are subject to Kickback because I am this piece once it cuts free is going to be bound between this blade and this fence and it's going to want to shoot it back that way so what I'm going to do is cut these but I'm going to make sure to get a hold of these pieces before they cut at the end so I can pull them on through do not want to start cutting this and just let go because like I said once it gets to the end that free board is going to become a missile so here we go foreign there we go there's 89.90 somewhere along in there um for those 10 inch wide boards I was able to get 15 out of the width so 15 and it was an eight foot board so I was able to get five rows I mean five uh yeah rows whatever you want to call so five rows of 15 is what I was able to get out of that eight foot long board by 10 inches wide just FYI next thing we got to do is go and take every one of these now and trim the ends here and here on both sides here's a a frame and you can see here we got to take that little Notch out just it's a tiny little Notch so that it'll fit down in these things so we got to do that to every one of them there's just so many little cuts on each thing so anyway let me get everything set up and we'll do that all right actually before we do that we're going to do this groove we'll Groove all of them then we'll come back and do the tiny little Notch I was talking about earlier since I've already got the table saw set up and this is the width of a table saw blade it's just easier than me putting the dado blade in now switching everything all around so we'll do the groove first so many damn steps to make these things this video is going to be seven hours long all right anyway 5 16. you want this blade 5 16 away from your fence that'll give you 5 16 on either side with an eighth inch kerf in the middle I've raised the blade just shy of a quarter inch it's just really close but not quite there you just wanna a uh you know a channel down this thing you don't want to cut the darn thing in half so let's go ahead and cut one see how it works that deep and there you have it only 89 more to go see you in a bit all right a quick tip to make sure you got this channel centered and you're not you know too far to this side or too far to that side what I like to do is cut a channel and then turn the saw blade off push it up there let's see if I can do it from the back side so it makes more sense that lines up perfectly with the saw blade which because we fed it through that way supposedly now turn it around and check it from the other end if it still hits the saw blade then you're dead in the middle there you go quick tip all right all our grooves are done now it's time to start cutting those little notches that we talked about before these notches are a sixteenth of an inch thick and 3 8 of an inch wide so as you can see I have my 3 8 inch dadel blade get that there we go it's 3 8 so when we feed this through it's going to take about that much off the r stick I've got a sixteenth High so it's just going to shave a 16th off we'll have to do that to both sides let's go ahead and feed one through I've got this block here just like before to protect my metal fence here we go foreign 16th off each side 3 8 inch deep let's see if it fits into one of our ears that we made all right I've got this so that it is fitting into my ears perfectly you should take off about a 16th off of each side [Music] I found that that made mine a little bit loose so I went a little less than a 16th because it goes this way I think it's more important for a good fit than June 16th just because I'm supposed to do a 16. so I just took a smidge off each side I did several of them tested until I got the perfect fit now cut them that way foreign pieces the tops of the frames these are 19 inches in length so I'm going to be taking that board right there and cutting it into 19 inch sections thank you okay there's our 19 inch blanks I don't have a blanks you have to just cut 19 inch segments on me to cut them on the table saw which uses an eighth of an inch every time it cuts so you're losing that eighth and when you're cutting this many small pieces that starts adding up to inches the bandsaw and its tiny little carf gonna get way more and it'll cut straight lines now so let's do it I've got it all set up to cut the width and the width is one inch we're going to be cutting one inch pieces all right the next step into making these is this board is six eighths three quarters and it needs to be 5 8. so I have to trim every board an eighth of an inch so I've set this up an eighth of an inch away from the blade so that we can cut those I like to save these eighth inch pieces they come in handy later okay all those cuts are done I Can't Describe Cuban level of fun that it was not you see all the pieces that were cut off oh this is over there okay the next thing we can do is I'm gonna cut these notches right here I'm gonna do them on three sides you can do it on both ends and make sure you do this bottom one on the same side I'm going to do one on this end and one on that I'm not saying I've done that just saying it can happen all right then I guess the first thing is I need to tell you that this is about an eighth of an inch high so just barely sticking up above the surface there and it is 3 8 wide the width of our pieces that we made earlier for our ears okay and you need this to be 5 8 away from the blade so you want that Notch to start at 5 8 and go 3 8 from there let's cut one and see what it looks like all right now let's see if it fits one of our ear pieces here and it does not fit it's a multi oh there it goes let's wrestles a little bit all right the next thing we're going to do is take the edges off the corners so they're not 90s like this we want to make them into 45s table saw blade this is protecting my metal fence I got it right up next to the blade just going to feed these through I've got my miter gauge here set at a 45 degree angle I want to put that under there it just knocks those Corners right off there you have it a little bit of a nicer profile than the others so all right next we're going to do the groove see like we did in the bottom piece for putting foundation in if you're going to use Foundation then you need those grooves I can tell you that I don't always use Foundation but I take those pieces that we cut off earlier these little 1 8 inch pieces and I'll glue a piece into this slot that we make but I'll break it off to the right length and then when you even if you don't have Foundation it just gives the bees something so they start in the middle and hopefully it will keep them building straight so I may buy Foundation but if I don't I I will put something just in the top one like that and these pieces that we cut off earlier that 1 8 strip that we cut off there the perfect for that Groove so that's why I said don't throw them away so let's get these grooves cut I've got this all set up it's just 1 8 inch wide just the width of the blade there the kerf that's grid we wanted about however deep that was earlier what is that about 3 16 3 16 2 deep there and that's all there is to it we're just going to run over one by one until here we go [Music] here we go all of them are cut all right it's time to put some of these together so I got some of these little sticks from earlier in the video to help spread the glue two end pieces a bottom a top some glue all right foreign music for you guys though all right looking pretty good if I do say so myself all right now then I guess you see your groove here your groove here to explain to you what I was talking about earlier with your foundation if you buy Foundation it'll come in these plastic strips it's a little thinner at the top and the bottom as you can see there and that's made for fitting in that Groove so you just put it in the groove then you just Flex it and pop it into the other Groove at the top and it's in there now then if you don't want to use the foundation that's where these pieces come in that we saw it off earlier that are an eighth inch I like to take one make sure it's the same length as the thing there broke down in the wrong spot good thing I got extras take that when you beat a glue now that yellow piece of foundation that you see sitting there is the only extra one I have and I don't know that I'm going to buy any this year so I'll probably be doing all of mine like this but I wasn't 100 sure that's why I went ahead and made the grooves and the tops and the bottoms just so I have choices on what I want to do in the future and there you go you got your B frame you got your thing there in the middle so that they'll build straight down instead of cattywampus or at least you hope that's what will happen and that's all there is to it now then I guess the only thing left to say is I think all of you can clearly see that building beat boxes fun easy quick probably worth it Building B frames unless you just like the smell of sawdust and you got nothing else you can build right now to take that urge away yeah you can build B frames but I think you see there are a jillion little cuts it takes forever by the time it's all said and done what you've spent on the wood or even if you got the wood free for that matter the time that you will spend making these in my opinion far exceeds the price that you can buy them from Mann lake or one of the other big boys um but I wanted to make this so you guys could see and plus I just wanted to make them and now that I've made them I don't think I want to make no more all right I hope you guys have enjoyed this it's been a long video hope you got something out of it this is Josh in Plano Texas

Channel: Plain Ol' Beekeeping in Plano, TX

Views: 145,226

Keywords: Beekeeping, langstroth frames, woodworking

Id: AWcpLx8rJFk

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2016