Any wood workers?

[am44mag]

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?

The jointer is way overkill for a beehive. All it does is square up the edge of a board so that when you joint two boards together (turning two boards into one wide board), the seam is near perfect. I have been woodworking for over 10 years, and have never really needed one. If you really feel the need to get one, get an old Stanley jointer plane and put some elbow grease into it.

[sparky45]

You can actually "square up" the Pine with your Table Saw.

[beemer]

You have been given good advice. I worked in furniture for 48 years mostly making sample frames and patterns. Most of the jointer work was to give one true edge as a reference point for the rest of the operations. A jointer is not very good for producing your final or correct dimensions.

It takes a while to get your head around it but a few simple machines can produce some very nice work, it's all in the application and of course precise measuring.

Please be careful, use push sticks, eye and ear protection. If some operation scares you find another way. I have been involved one way or another in a few accidents and most could have prevented.

Dave

[JWT]

Jointers are used for creating flat and square faces. The planer is for thickness adjustments and creating parallel faces.

If your wood has a cup or twist the planer may not remove it. The pressure rollers of the planer can flatten out the cup or twist while planning creating a consistently thick non flat board. use care in running anything not flat through the table saw. If it rocks at all the saw may grab and throw the wood at you.

If your wood is already fairly flat you can use just the planer by taking several shallow passes on alternating sides to gradually arrive at final thickness. If your boards are not relatively flat take them to a local mill for jointing. It's really a safety issue.

[pressonregardless]

All boards are 10 feet long. and are 2x4, 2x6 , 2x8 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8.

What size boxes are you planning on ? Mediums or shallows ? Deeps will require wider boards.

[Alstep]

Save yourself as lot of time, effort, $$$, and grief, and go to a bee supply house and buy your hives knocked down. I've done a lot of carpentry work and also kept bees, and I soon learned it's far easier & cheaper to build my hives from pre cut unassembled parts. Also get your stuff from the same supplier, as sometimes the frames and foundation from one supplier will not fit in another's hives.

Here are two good suppliers I've dealt with in the past, both very accommodating;

https://www.dadant.com/catalog/hive-parts

https://www.mannlakeltd.com/

Bee keeping is interesting and a lot of work, and expensive. I must have had at least $1200 invested in my first jar of honey. Bees have a lot going against them; mites, disease, weather, bears, and lots of unknowns.

Good luck!

[OS OK]

Save yourself as lot of time, effort, $$$, and grief, and go to a bee supply house and buy your hives knocked down. I've done a lot of carpentry work and also kept bees, and I soon learned it's far easier & cheaper to build my hives from pre cut unassembled parts. Also get your stuff from the same supplier, as sometimes the frames and foundation from one supplier will not fit in another's hives.

Here are two good suppliers I've dealt with in the past, both very accommodating;

https://www.dadant.com/catalog/hive-parts

https://www.mannlakeltd.com/

Bee keeping is interesting and a lot of work, and expensive. I must have had at least $1200 invested in my first jar of honey. Bees have a lot going against them; mites, disease, weather, bears, and lots of unknowns.

Good luck!

That struck me as funny...as I read your comment I was thinking about handloading & casting equipment & what it must have cost to get that first box of ammo!

[Mr_Sheesh]

Good point there! My first ammo was free (family member owned all the fixings) but the next box I'm loading here, OW, not so cheap Worth it though.

Bees definitely are tough to keep, I imagine it's pretty rewarding though.

[tunnug]

Everybody has given very good pointers, 29 yr cabinetmaker here, one of the newer items available is the kregg tool for making joints. Biscuits, rabbets, dowels and so forth all have their places and the only drawback to them is waiting for the glue to dry before proceeding to the next step.
The kregg tool is a jig to allow you to make pocket holes that guide screws to hold your pieces together, when you have screwed it together you can continue working with the piece without worry that the pieces will move before the glue is dry, there are different priced tools from simple one hole kits to jigs that'll do multiple pockets at a time, definitely worth looking into it.
https://www.kregtool.com/store/c13/kreg-jigsreg/

[Alstep]

That struck me as funny...as I read your comment I was thinking about handloading & casting equipment & what it must have cost to get that first box of ammo!

You bring it up a good point, OS OK. Casting, loading, & bee keeping sure amount to a considerable investment in time & money. But I don't regret doing either one. And the beeswax comes in handy when making lube, so the two endeavors compliment each other.

[CastingFool]

I have made my own guides to drill pocket holes at an angle. I normally use a 3/8" bradpoint drill, with a piece of tape to mark the drilling depth.

[Mr_Sheesh]

I have the Kreg R2 and the mini, handy! I'd have to have the shop I'll have once I move, to make them, so it was easier to just make them. Instructions aren't too clear at first but using it helps there

[OS OK]

Those Kregg tools are one of the nicest things to hit the woodworking industry in a long time. The more you use it the better you get at it...the more ideas you get to use it on other projects too...they say you can join boards for greater widths too but I have to draw the line there...it's hard to beat biscuits and clamps, no misalignings with a biscuit.

[shaper]

I will be building deeps and mediums. 1x12 boards are way too expensive to build bee hives with. I bought the tools for drilling hols on the edges for pegs to get wider boards. I'm sure there is a fancy name for it. I also have some tongue and groove that I plan to experiment with . Sounds easy to me, we will see.

[Wayne Smith]

If you have a router and table tongue and groove, or many other joinery styles are available. Look at MSC and what they offer if you are not aware of them.

[David2011]

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.

. . .and, given some featherboards and some skill, you can make decent panels that wont need a lot of cleanup.

~Bazoo

Featherboards are worth their weight in at least salt in a production environment. They prevent lots of errors. The ones with rollers are nice, too.

Not to start an argument, I have tried to figure out how to deliberately make a cut that was not parallel using the rip fence of a table saw. If the straight face of a board remains against the fence, the second cut on the opposite edge WILL be parallel. No way around it, even if the fence is not square to the table. If the fence is out of square one edge of the saw blade will skim the cut face and leave it parallel to the fence. A taper cutting jig is required to not make parallel sides so if it makes you fell better, go ahead and trim the first side again but it shouldn't make the edges any more parallel.

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.

Yes! Works every time.

[gpidaho]

After two pages of advice we have finally gotten around to one of the handiest uses of a joiner and that is in making a strait edge board with non-parallel edges. You start with a squared up board and make a pass on a part of the length, say a 1/4th then 1/2 then 3/4 then a full pass this will give you a taper of three times your depth of cut. Very handy for window or door casements where non-parallel edges are required for proper fit. And that's where you NEED a joiner. Gp

[Just Duke]

Get a el cheapo Stanley #6 hand plane and glue a board or flat piece of metal onto the side of if for a guide.
Also you'd need to do hand cut or machine cut finger lap joints or they will just fall apart in the weather.
There's a fella on youtube that shows how to make a jig for a skill saw to cut the hand grips in the sides.
I hope your woods 1 inch.
Don't pay attention to whether the wood is completely dry. With the finger lap joint and the grain all going the same direction, you won't have any problems as the will expand and contract at the same time.
The real head ache for some is the hive frames.
Call me if you need help but if your a novice, a bee hive should not be your first project.

[Shopdog]

Ooops

[gpidaho]

While I have great respect for a quality hand plane with a good sharp edge their purpose is not production work. Gp