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?search_query=sled%2C+woodworking%2C+table+ saw+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.

[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

[mold maker]

There was an era when carpenters and woodworkers carried all their tools with them to the job. Hand planes were as production as any. I enjoy living among several handmade pieces of cabinetry. Each has the tail tale signature of hand planed surfaces and hand forged fastners.
I doubt any of today's machine room products will survive the wear and tear of daily use for so long a time.

[AZ Pete]

To square a board: cut board to length plus 2 inches, join one face, then join one edge, plane other face, saw other edge, then join that edge. You have to know what face and edge to join, in general the concave one.... For bee hives, since the finished pieces are so short, the precision of joining is probably not necessary. If you are building furniture, then it
is.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Shopdog]

Hand planes are still "production" tools in repro casework(furniture).Semantics maybe?

[OS OK]

There was an era when carpenters and woodworkers carried all their tools with them to the job. Hand planes were as production as any. I enjoy living among several handmade pieces of cabinetry. Each has the tail tale signature of hand planed surfaces and hand forged fastners.
I doubt any of today's machine room products will survive the wear and tear of daily use for so long a time.

You could consider this angle...in the life of a hand plane and/or lifetime of the finish carpenter/furniture builder, a plane might see (take a guess) 10K foot of lumber? In the same scenario, in the lifetime of a modern planer/shaper/table saw (you name it) those pieces of equipment might see 10 times (or more) that amount of lumber.
I think the analogy is relevant to total production of work & both are repairable/rebuildable...so...how do you really determine which is best?
There are advantages on both sides of the isle, with one you plug in and turn on...the other you just add elbow grease...lots of elbow grease!

[gpidaho]

I'm certainly not arguing that the hand plane is not a useful tool. It's the artists brush of the carpentry trade. Any finish carpenter or cabinet worker knows their value and is proficient in there use. Yes' a hundred + years ago hand tools were what they had. Look at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego as an outstanding accomplishment and a work of art built with hand tools. Also at that time they were plowing the HUGE farm of forty acres with the help of a Mule. To suggest that something like a Bee hive should be built carving rough lumber with a hand plane is ridiculous. Gp

[bangerjim]

You can NEVER have too many tools! I hae a least 2 of every hand and power (wood an metal) mankind can think of. It is nice, when planning and doing a project, to just grab the right tool or walk up to the correct stationary power tool!

I could not live without my my 3 jointers I own.

I even have 2 thickness SANDERS! Amazing tools for pro woodworking.

Banger

[mold maker]

I'm certainly not arguing that the hand plane is not a useful tool. It's the artists brush of the carpentry trade. Any finish carpenter or cabinet worker knows their value and is proficient in there use. Yes' a hundred + years ago hand tools were what they had. Look at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego as an outstanding accomplishment and a work of art built with hand tools. Also at that time they were plowing the HUGE farm of forty acres with the help of a Mule. To suggest that something like a Bee hive should be built carving rough lumber with a hand plane is ridiculous. Gp

The mule might be outdated as a power source, but the plow has only been multiplied and a tractor used to pull it. Its the same method of farming that has been used since metal tools were invented.
We use what ever tool is at hand. If a plane and rough lumber is what ya got, and a beehive is what ya need, it's only elbow grease away.

[Shopdog]

Oooops

[MaryB]

Last door I had to trim I used my ez-track for the skil saw. Clamped it on the door and shaved off a piece you could see through! Perfectly straight cut.

[.45Cole]

Agreed with everyone, you probable don't need a jointer. Best to have a good tablesaw (probably cabinet saw) and a router/router table. With these you can get most things done. keep the blades sharp and spring for high end blades. Buy a second to last edition of a Fine Woodworking book on making furniture and you'll learn all about wood, grain, correct tools, and correctly using correct tools. As an FYI delta use to make a combination tablesaw jointer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_tlD1dAM7k].

[shaper]

Wow.The knowledge and skill you guys must have to bring up answers to my simple question. I am in envy of it all. The way I was thinking was to cut four pieces of lumber, nail them together and I have a bee super. Not so. I have started buying wood working books. You have made me to think I can turn the carport into another bedroom. well, in time maybe. I have bothered the local carpenter shop so much they have decided to build me a real router / table saw, for some honey in the future. Not a bad deal there. Thanks for the information, keep it coming I have more pine, black walnut, ceder, oak, hickory trees waiting.

[bangerjim]

If you have all those "waiting" trees around to be processed, you really should consider investing in a QUALITY thickness planer AND a jointer! Not benchtop stuff. I brought 1,000BF of prime black walnut back from Iowa 8 years ago ( now well seasoned). The mill cut it to my requirements of 6/4 and various width from 6-10 inches. All are rough saw-mill cut and a hand plane is totally useless!!!!! ( I own nearly every style of hand plane made by mankind.) My stationary power tools are required if those very rough-cut boards are ever brought into useful condition for my antique repair/reproduction needs.

Yes the "olde tymers" used hand tools.......but that is all they had. Today they would NOT do it that way!!!!! There are some unique processes I still do that require specialized planes (Stanley #55) that cannot be done with power tools.

Your "tool base" depends on: 1) your quantity/quality of rough wood you have, 2) the amount you need for QUALITY cabinet/project work, 3) the depth of your pocketbook, 4) the pride you take in the finished products.

Good luck in your future woodworking. I have been buying and collecting wood and metal tools (big and small, hand and power) for over 45 years.

Banger

[Wayne Smith]

And a super is a lot more than a box. Get plans!