Any wood workers?

[shaper]

About three years ago I had 4 pine trees cut and cut into lumber. Now I am trying to build some bee hives with the lumber. I had it cut to actual 1 inch and 4 inch and so on. So I went out yesterday and bought ($340.) a planer to clean it up. Now I hear i need to buy a Joiner. I don't know what it is much less what it should do. The longest piece of lumber will be less than 20 inches. So what does it do and do I really need one?

[bdicki]

A planer finishes the face of the wood and a joiner finishes the edge for when you gluing 2 or more pieces together to make a wider board. Not really necessary for bee hives, more for furniture or cabinets. Unless you already have one, I would think a table saw would be more useful than a planer.

[Bazoo]

I have never built any beehives. A joiner is a machine that has knives like a planer, and a fence which is adjustable but normally set at 90 degrees to the table. What it does, is cleans, and squares and straightens the edge of a board that has been planed.

You do not need one though if you're working with shorter pieces and you are not going to glue the pieces together to make panels. You can use your table saw to true one edge, and then set your fence narrower, and trim the other edge and it should be pretty nice. Then you should trim the first edge again, to make sure its parallel.

If you have a good saw, and a heavy blade, like a freud glueline rip blade, you can make panels without joining, but you'll end up having some serviceable, but not perfect joints. If you've already planed to thickness and you want to make panels, you can get a glue joint bit for the router table and, given some featherboards and some skill, you can make decent panels that wont need a lot of cleanup.

~Bazoo

[shaper]

I didn't know how many wood working tools i had until I started this project. 2 chop saws, 2 radial arm saws, 1 large table saw, 2 small table saws, 1 scroll saw, 2 routers, 1 band saw. Of course some are for parts only. I buy a lot of things from the local metal scrap yard. parts are parts no matter where they come from.

[gpidaho]

shaper: A joiner has a LOT of good uses but I wouldn't think you'd need one to make the hives. As stated above a table saw would be a better tool for the money. Use a good strait edge tacked on to the boards and run this against the table saw fence to straighten the edges and then you can use a biscuit joiner to connect the boards together or use the table saw to rabbit join the edges. PM me with more questions if you need to. I was a finish carpenter for a lot of years. Home Depot or Lowe's will have some good "How to" books on tool use and general carpentry. The books will likely be a better source than us here at the forum. As the saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words" Good luck. Gp

[garandsrus]

I agree that you don’t need a joiniter for what you are doing.

Another very common use for a jointer is to flatten one face of a board before planing the other edge. If you don’t do this and plane off too much at a time on a twisted board, the rollers on the planer can flatten the board and then the twist will come back after the board exits the planer and the board will end up twisted. Taking thin cuts initially will help eliminate the problem.

You can also set up a router in a router table to act like a jointer. You use a split fence.

[shaper]

You got me with the rabbit with a biscuit. Think I will go look for a woodworking for dummies. book
Guys even though it looks like it I'm not a total dummy here. I do metal work. I build parts for antique airplanes and cars by hand work only. Wood just dose't bend the way I want it to.

[starmac]

Sometimes on rough sawn wood, it will cup when it dries, if you have a jointer wider than the board it will flatten one side before running through a planer. I don't think bees are all that particular though.

[Grmps]

How smooth do you need the edges of the wood to be?
I would think a decent table saw with a decent blade would get the edges smooth enough for a be house.
You'll probably find the wood will be close to 3/4 x 3 1/2 when you get it cleaned up
if you rough cut the wood a little longer than you need 20 1/2 to 21 in it will be easier to true the edges
(get a straight4 ft board with a small lip at the bottom of the board away from the fence to rest your pine on
have the board "bowing" away from the guide board and set the saw fence to where the blade cuts off the bowed edge
then, after you've taken the bow off (straightened one edge of all the pine boards using the guide you're done with the guide then run the straight edge of the pine along the fence and make the othe side of teh board parralel.

[Czech_too]

IMO, for the type of project you have in mind and the length of the pieces, you don't NEED a jointer.

As Bazoo writes -
"You do not need one though if you're working with shorter pieces and you are not going to glue the pieces together to make panels. You can use your table saw to true one edge, and then set your fence narrower, and trim the other edge and it should be pretty nice. Then you should trim the first edge again, to make sure its parallel."

This is what I would do.

[CastingFool]

I don't have a jointer, but I do have a good Unisaw. To "joint" a board, I do what GPidaho mentioned. Tack a straight board to the board you want to straighten out, and run the straight board against the fence. Set the fence so the saw blade just takes a skim cut on the rough edge, and keep moving the fence towards the blade, till the saw blade cleans up the edge along the whole length of the board you want to straighten. Take the straight board off, and now you have a good straight edge to run against the fence. To make wider boards, there are various ways to glue the boards up. Edge glue, biscuit joints, spline joints, or tongue and groove.

[ascast]

All above is correct -moving on, you need to make your corner joints strong. You have an air nailer/brad gun right? 2" brads about? The high master will do a double dovetail, master a single, expert a finger box joint, sharpshooter a double half lap and the rest of us use a lot of nails.
you can do the half laps with either the router or tablesaw (dado style), you wont need glue, just a few more nails.
also - you will need to half lap a lip inside for the frames to sit on--the end pieces
also - lifting handles - again a plunge cut with circ saw or router - they only fail when your lifting 80 pounds
In all this, remember the a bee is so big, too much space anywhere in there and they will fill with drone comb or queen cells.
keep us posted

ps your pine is seasoned right?

[Wayne Smith]

Three year old? Yeah, it's seasoned! Half an inch a year, I was told.
You have been given good advice. With your experience you know how to follow a blueprint. Think of plans similar, but you can be much less precise. Remember that wood moves, metal doesn't. While metal workers work with thousands of an inch for wood 1/32 is tight, wood moves. If there is not room for it to move, it splits. It moves more horizontally than it does longitudinally.
You should have plans that have been thought through so you don't have to design, too.

Your first issue is dimensioning your stock. Always dimension larger than your final, you trim to the final. You will see this as you go along. Your third and fourth and fifth hive will be much nicer and stronger than your first.
You have good instuctions above for dimensioning.

Realize also that because wood moves it needs to be finished or not finished the same both sides. For example the bottom of a table needs the same finish as the top or the wood will absorb water from the air at differential levels and split. I believe beehives are either left unfinished or wax finished, but follow your plan instructions.

[OS OK]

I had to do the same thing to rough sawn oak before I could take them to the jointer or the planer...only that they were 6~8 feet long and some of them were 8~10" wide...I needed that first straight cut edge to get the process going.

Someone here mentioned tacking them to a board that has straight edges, then running the straight edge against the table saw fence to establish that edge you need...this is the ticket.

For me, I didn't want nail holes or screw holes in the oak so I made a 'sled' that had clamp tracks on it spaced 12" apart and ran the length of a 3/4" plywood sled that was 8' long and 14" wide. I used track style clamps to hold the large pieces on the sled to establish the straight edge on the table saw.
Your solution is much simpler, you can use a sled that is much shorter and if you don't want holes in the boards your going to surface plane then you can clamp your boards front and rear...but you need to make a way to clamp the boards so that they will NOT move and then bind up in the table saw. Not 'maybe' it'll hold or 'I hope' it does but it MUST hold fast or you don't even want to talk about what will happen next.
This is a pretty simple thing, establishing the first straight for making 4 sided lumber...all it takes is a little more time.

Computer search the key words 'straight edge & sled & woodworking' or some combination like that...You-Tube should be full of fellas using home made sleds to do exactly what you intend.

Count your fingers before you start and make sure there all there when your done! . . . c h a r l i e



E D I T : I couldn't resist the search so I looked for you and this looks just like the sled that'll do it for you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmFNdN7toY

...this video came from this search page, it's full of examples ...

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...+straight+edge

[ascast]

oh yeah- build a jig for your cutting and especially assembly, in some situations a wrap around rope or rachet strap is best.

[Mr_Sheesh]

"Count your fingers and toes" truly!

I'll add this - Use a Push Stick(s) or anything else (your choice of safety gear) that will keep your fingers, hands, face, tie, etc. out of the spinning sharp bits.

When I was in my teens, family member was using a Jointer/Planer, working on a rounded workpiece. It turned on them - and they weren't using push sticks. Took the top off a finger, just the fingernail area - They were LUCKY. Got to hear the Dr. telling them that they'd worked on a similar accident earlier that month that'd been FAR worse. Eyepro and Earpro too, good ideas those.

[shaper]

And I thought this would be so simple. I had my lumber rough cut to true dimensions because I knew i would have to plane it before using it .All boards are 10 feet long. and are 2x4, 2x6 , 2x8 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8. yes, some are warped. I was not really worried about a little warp in a short piece, maybe I should rethink that. Because they will live their life outside everything will be painted with good outside white paint. I have asked my son n law to go to Loews and get me a beginners woodworking book. Can't find anything like that in my little town. All of your advice is sound and appreciated. I have already cut some pieces now I have to clean them up before I can assemble them.

[waksupi]

It would be cheaper to give a millwright $20 to run them through his machine. Any good lumber yard has a millwright, or knows one locally.

[gwpercle]

A hand plane can also be used to dress the edges. With a table saw, hand planes and hand held power drill I made a lot of furniture that we couldn't afford to buy. Mine were probably better made than the store bought .
Green lumber, when air dried , needs as a rule of thumb , 1 year per inch of wood, in Louisiana with our humidity give it two years minimum. Properly stacking weighing and drying green lumber is an art/science unto itself.
Good luck with project(s)
Gary
If not properly dried the finished project starts to twist, warp and develop cracks.

[Plate plinker]

shaper: A joiner has a LOT of good uses but I wouldn't think you'd need one to make the hives. As stated above a table saw would be a better tool for the money. Use a good strait edge tacked on to the boards and run this against the table saw fence to straighten the edges and then you can use a biscuit joiner to connect the boards together or use the table saw to rabbit join the edges. PM me with more questions if you need to. I was a finish carpenter for a lot of years. Home Depot or Lowe's will have some good "How to" books on tool use and general carpentry. The books will likely be a better source than us here at the forum. As the saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words" Good luck. Gp

this is a good technique.