All Replies on How do I cut this feature?

I would clamp the box or side firmly to the table saw fence, position it over the blade in the right spot, turn on the saw, and then raise the blade to a point at a certain depth in the wood, but not through…then tilt the blade to make the scoop part.

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

Jays approach sound like a good approach plus using a dado blade.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

My grandfather was a beekeeper and made his similar to the way Cosmicsniper suggests, except he had a jig.
I am sorry I don’t remember the exact details of the jig. That is one of those childhood memories buried somewhere deep in my twisted mind.
He had something that lay into both miter slots. It had a wooden fence and a stop that he held the side of the box against and lower it down onto a blade that was already set at the height that he used. Then the whole contraption was on a piano hinge. Once the box was flush down on the table, he slowed swung it sideways, cutting the hollowed out area you see with the saw blade.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

I hope that explains it.
I’m sorry if it isn’t as clear as I remember it in my head.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

By the way, I noticed you used box joints on your bee boxes.
My grandfather used nothing but dovetails. He always said dovetails would hold up longer than any other joint for bee boxes. He’s say that with him having over five hundred hives scattered all over north Georgia, he wanted to rebuild bee boxes as little as possible.

I have fond memories of those bee boxes. As a child, we turned one on end, one on side, and used the one on the side as a seat and the one on end as a table. That’s what the kids eat on at dinner because in my grandmother’s house, kids didn’t sit at the dinner table.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

I just picked up my first real piece of woodworking equipment, a JET contractor saw and so I’m resigned to using box joints until I can convince the Mrs. I need a router and router table too. I mentioned it the other day and her eyes rolled so far back in her head all I could see was white, LOL. My one car garage that also has to house bikes and other outdoor gear just isn’t big enough for a full blown woodshop. I think I can picture the jig with the piano hinge.

Here is one way but doesn’t cut a flat top. I’ve seen this done before and it works but takes lots of finger strength to hold a 90-100 lb box.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaWRjpJ5f0w

I found this on youtube, could the blade angle be changed to 90 degree to sled surface perhaps a few hold downs and an additional stop? The process might need to be slowly fed into the blade. I would also consider using a dado pair set to help combat blade flexing.

Just a thought, never tried it, likely never will have the need to try it. Trying to visualize this I hope it works out like I think it will. Wonder if it is actually safe, perhaps someone else can comment on that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5yWQCARkUw#ws

At any rate, good luck with the bee boxes, and you know the bees won’t notice if the hand hold is not perfect. lol

The bees won’t care what the hand holds look like until you drop a box because of poorly designed/manufactured handles.

I’m thinking I’ll just add a 1X2 cleat glued and screwed with a 5deg taper cut on the top to keep water from pooling.

I do have a through brewing in my head that uses a jig comprised of a parallel link 4-bar mechanism. I’ll do some figuring tonight at home and make some pro/e models tomorrow at work.

The video you linked to, the one with the guy making the handles with a circular saw.
I think that would work. However, why couldn’t the balde be tilted on the saw so that it’s at a right angle to the box side? This would make a flat top hole like you want.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

William, you’re absolutely right!

DLMKA,
Grandfather tried the piece of wood screwed to the side idea.
That would get you by for a while. In the long run though, when the boxes get some age and wear and tear on them, the handles come off, either from the screw pulling out or rusting and the glue failing, usually at the worst possible time.
It seems like a good idea, but once you get a real good hive, one that’s really producing, those boxes get full of bloating, yummy full comb and weigh quite a bit.
I think Grandfather told me once that it was nothing for a good hive to have boxes weighing over a hundred pounds.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

The cut in the pic was not cut on a table saw – though you could approximate it with one.

The cut in the photo was done with a router bit in a specialized jig. (You can even see the tear out at the end of the cut.)

I’ve seen specialty router tables with an angled router spindle (mounted horizontally) and a long end-mill style bit to cut such things. There is a spring-loaded and hinged table insert that lifts the work out of the router bit and a stop block on the fence at each end for the start and stop positions.

With the router running, the workpiece is laid on the table insert against the fence. Downward pressure compresses the table insert spring and lowers the piece into the router bit. The operator slides the piece through the cut to the other stop block and allows the table insert to lift the workpiece out of the cutter, then removes the finished piece.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

I would be inclined to make these handles with a router and full sized template. Clamp or tape the template in place and rout in several light passes. They won’t taper unless your jig is tapered. A bowl and tray bit will give you an adequate grip. It woud be very repeatable.
Cutting handles with a circular saw or table saw sounds a little scary to me.

-- Willie, Washington "If You Choose Not To Decide, You Still Have Made a Choice" - Rush

A router base makes the cut tricky to work out. You
can build a custom cradle to hold a router without
the base flange getting in the way, but you’ll still
need a real long bit and probably a collet extension –
you’re looking at over $100 for those two tools
and the there’s the fuss with making the custom
router table to do the cut.

A simpler solution is to work out a way to drill it
with forstner bits on a drill press and knock out
the waste with a chisel. Not quite so neat, but
quick to set up and the chisel work is easy.

DLMKA, do as you will but if you have a table saw the video I linked would likely be safer and quicker. I would just change the jig a bit.

BTW, if you took offense with “the bees won’t notice if the hand hold is not perfect” I apologize but I do think the joint would come out reasonably close to what you are looking for. Perhaps we have a different ideas of perfect and acceptable.

BTW for elongated scoops, you can duplicate the table saw methods at the ends and then use a chisel to scoop out between the two TS scoops. Hope that makes sense.

You could also just keep doing it across the board. Just be sure to affix the board well to the fence each time.

If you need a tighter radius than the saw blade, I would use a smaller dado set.

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

I have used a dado set on an angle to create recessed hand holds before.

It isn’t very pretty, but it is pretty functional.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

I’m not looking for pretty, just functional. I’ve seen how they cut these in commercial operations that make thousands upon thousands of these a year but that kind of tooling just isn’t reasonable for the home shop where I’ll make a handful each year.

FYI: A shallow (5 11/16” tall) 10 frame box full of honey weights around 45 lbs, a medium (6 5/8” tall) weighs in around 60lbs and a deep (9 5/8” tall) just shy of 100 lbs). Honey is pretty dense weighing about 1.5 times as much as water.

I recommend you cut a few with a chisel. It’s easy and
fast in a soft wood like pine and kind of fun too.

I may be mistaken, I haven’t as much as touched a bee box since I was very young, but the ones my Grandfather used must have been at least as deep as the deepest ones you listed. I actually thought they were deeper than that, which is possible, considering by the time I was old enough to remember, he made all his boxes and frames himself.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

I also seem to remember that his boxes were 12 frame boxes.
I remember this because his home made extractor held six frames, and each box was two runs on the extractor.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

DLMKA,
I felt a need to come back again and talk about my grandfather for a bit.
He was a beekeeper hos whole life. It’s all he ever done. In the early seventies, he moved to the north Georgia mountains because he bought a piece of property there cheap with dogwood trees one it. He always said dogwood trees made the lightest and sweetest honey.
At the height of his career he had over five hundred hives. He built anything he needed by that point to keep costs down. Most of his honey, with the exception of what he sold locally at that time, went to the Sue Bee Honey Company.
In the mid 90s, his hives were being destroyed by black bears. He’d had a few run ins with wildlife officials because they were at the time on an in danger list. He could not shoot them or use any kind of traps that harmed them. The officials came and set cage traps, but they were unsuccessful. The bears would walk right by the traps and take out the hives.
Everytime my grandfather moved the hives, the bears would find them. He ran himself into the ground trying to stay in business. By ‘94, he was down to less than a hundred hives and could no longer support his family. He’d paid into social secrurity all those years in hopes of never needing it, but it got to a point that he had no choice but to retire.
This was a man I never remember having as much as a cold. He drank a tall glass of honey and viniger every night before bed and that’s what he says kept him well. Almost six months to the day after retirement, he passed away in his sleep. He was never the same man after the day he gave up working the bees.

I’m sorry, but I have to share stories about my grandfather anytime I meet someone who dabbles in beekeeping.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

Great story William. Sounds like your grandfather was a great man with lots of good stories. We just started beekeeping this past spring. I bought all the boxes and frames but built bottom boards and top covers on my dad’s tablesaw but since he’s 3 hours away it was a challenge to find the time to go make equipment when we went to visit. I just bought my first tablesaw mainly to build bee equipment to save some money but can easily see myself using it for making things around the house too. I started out with two hives and word go out that I was keeping bees and started getting calls from friends and random acquaintences that they had swarms in their yard and now we have 9 hives and not quite enough supers disperse amongst them next summer. We’re not beekeeping for a living but I would like to expand so that we can make a decent side income from selling honey, beeswax candles, cosmetics, soaps, etc.

There’s money to be made off of beekeeping if one is willing to do the work.
As I said, my grandfather did it for a living.
He worked twelve to sixteen hours days six days a week.
When he was running batches of honey, you’d only see him outside the honey house for breakfast and dinner.

He also made money by selling queens to other beekeepers around the country.
He had these little wooden boxes he made with screen on one side, and a plug of gluecose on the end so they could feed until they got to their destination alive.
In the end, he had to use an outside courier service to ship these, which wound up being costly to the buyers. So he didn’t sell as many. The post office refused to ship anymore because too many worker bees would follow the truck so far once the queen was on board. Worker bees somehow know where their queen is and follow. The post office truck drivers reported that they could drive fast as they could down the mountain to the main branch with the queen on board. Before they could finish unloading there, the other bees had started showing up and scaring them.

I used to help Grandpa when I was a kid. To this day, I’m not scared of bees. I love them. I understand that if you treat them with respect they will not intentionally sting you. For some odd reason though, I still run like a school girl from wasps and hornets.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

My grandfather’s name was Harold Smith.
He stood six foot three, wide as a horse, and not an ounce of fat on him. He was very fit.
I remember when I was eight years old, he was in his forties, I had a broke leg. He carried me on his shoulders up Stone Mountain, and then back down. That’s a helluva feat for a man that age.
He had snow white hair. Noone could explain why, but his hair had turned snow white when he was in his early thirties and he had that head full of white hair until the day he died. Some say it was from being in the sun so much when his hair was so blonde to start with.
He was the type man who seldom said anything. When he spoke though, you’d better listen.
He and my grandmother never talked to each other.
Actually, they acted like they couldn’t stand each other.
Yet, they had thirteen children.
I assume they got along sometime or another.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

When you start selling beewax, let me know a price.
I want some.
I believe in using that stuff on anything.
Since the only local beekeeper aorund here died, I haven’t been able to find any pure beeswax.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

My kids (4, 5, 5, 9) all come help with the bees, only the youngest gets a little nervous when they first get opened but she got a be tangled in her hair once too.

I use a router in a table for that cut!

A cove bit and the workpiece upside down on the table with stops for the desired width, makes a very close cut to that and it can be made as wide as desired.

-- "I never met a board I didn't like!"

I’m with oldnovice – cove bit in a router table is the safest and quickest way to create this hold.

The tablesaw and circular saw ideas scare the bee juice out of me. If I saw anyone doing that type of operation I would be standing as far from them as I could get.

-- Sam Hamory - The project is never finished until its "finished"!

I’m in agreement as well, saw blades are meant to cut one direction, pushing work in the same direction as the axis of rotation just seems like disaster waiting to happen.

I think the board mounted with as beveled boards and a router bit could make that handle in a short time.

-- Owner of custom millwork shop

Fron beesource.com:

The most often asked question on making your own beekeeping equipment: How do you make professional looking hand holds? The answer appeared in the July issue of Bee Culture. You make a jig that holds the tops and sides over the table saw blade. Taking multiple light cuts, tilt the arbor while the blade spins, raise the blade a little more and return to the 90 degree position. Raise the blade again and tilt. Repeat until done. You are cutting sideways, using the saw’s set to remove the wood. The result is superior to the commercial molding cutters because there is no tear out. The disadvantage: it takes almost a minute to cut one hand hold.

I like the table saw method. I would do the jig and blade tilt at 14 degrees instead of 15 degree tilt and jig he made. Then make another jig for a router with a 14 degree dovetail bit that would just be used to flatten the handle section of the cut. Should go very fast. I know it is 2 operations, but would be safe and quick.

-- Oldworld, Fair Oaks, Ca

Oh, for that matter, it would be easier to do on a radial
arm saw.