Lathe Hack and old school tool use.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by loulac

First class work as usual.
I first thought using top quality steel for a gouge was not justified, but you seem to have a nice stock of that steel, so it's not a problem. Besides you'll always be able to shorten the gouge and weld the cutting part on a handle made of common steel. Glad to know your hand can slide smoothly on tne toolrest.

Thank you Loulac.
The old barrels were ear marked for such things and were rusty and shot out.

My next task will be to measure the lathe and put tape on the wall representing the lathe parts tool rest and so on.
I will then figure out how tall to make the stand it sits on where I will be comfortable.
I find most lathes to be too tall.
You are correct I am cutting off most of the steel to use for something else.

Worth

[Fusion_power]

Loulac, to answer your question about bees, I have been a beekeeper since I was 10 years old, as of today, that makes 47 years of beekeeping. Trachea mites wiped out my bees in 1988, I rebuilt by getting Buckfast queens. Varroa mites wiped me out again in the winter of 1993/1994. I started again with a single swarm that I split into 3 colonies with purchased queens. In 2004, I found a queen in a swarm I caught that had a modest but useful amount of varroa resistance. At that time, Purvis Apiaries had developed queens with decent varroa tolerance. I purchased 10 Purvis queens and used them to produce drones that were mated to queens from my varroa resistant queen. The combination was effective giving me two traits for varroa resistance, mite grooming and Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. I maintained them since then totally without varroa treatments of any kind. For several years, I lost colonies to varroa. The survivors stabilized so that by 2010 I was no longer losing bees to mites. I brought in some outside stock in 2012 with proven varroa resistance in order to avoid inbreeding.

The traits my bees carry are:VSH, Mite Grooming, shutdown egg laying when nectar is unavailable, expand rapidly in spring and fall for the major flows in this area, and are extremely sensitive to any strange odors in the hive. Their only major negative is an extremely strong tendency to swarm which I spend too much time in spring preventing.

I was using Langstroth deep equipment until this year. I decided to switch over entirely to square modified Dadant equipment. My reasons for changing were that Brother Adam said this is the best hive to use and that I figured out how to use them in a horizontal 2 queen system that should be very productive. This is pretty close to the equipment I am using. https://www.imkertechnik-wagner.de/s...lett-1052.html

I built my own frames starting in 1976 and figured out early that I like 31.5 mm frame end bars in the brood nest. I can put 14 of them in a square Dadant hive body. This is equivalent capacity of 18 Langstroth deep frames. By placing a divider in the center of the box, I have 7 frames on each side giving egg laying capacity of about 60,000 cells for each queen. I am now going into winter with 24 hives several of which are set up with 2 queens for winter.

Interior dimensions of the hive bodies are: 18 5/16 X 18 5/16 X 11 5/8
Frames are 11 1/4 inches deep and made to provide top bee space.
I am using Killion deep bottom boards to increase ventilation, an adaptation for my climate

Here are a few pictures:

[Worth1]

Darrel I got into bees in the early 70's at home as you did.
Our first hive was one we robbed the honey from in the national forest.
We took the bees and the honey home with us.
To this day I can track a bee from a water hole to its hive.
As you know they will take off in an almost straight line back to the hive.
Then we started building hives and supers and buying bees from the Sears farm and ranch catalog.
Worth

[loulac]

Thanks for such a complete description. You may not have eradicated varroa entirely but you managed to control it, a big point. As I promised not to go off line too long I'll stay in the background and enjoy looking at your pictures from time to time, your dadant hives are exactly like mine...

[salix]

Thanks for posting those pictures and descriptions, Darrel. Love to see "the Girls" at work.

[Rajun Gardener]

Somebody say bees? I don't have bees yet but just built a 7 frame Langstoth medium, foundationless frame swarm trap for next year and I've been feeding bees for 2 weeks now just to attract them to the yard. These bees are coming from a small feral colony about a 1/4 mile away and I never have more than about 100 bees at once. The hive is too high in the tree to get to. Sometime in the near future I'm gonna go into full hive production and build at least two hives with 4 boxes each. I want to use deeps for brood and mediums for supers.

Do you see any problems with this?

[Fusion_power]

Rajun, why don't you start a thread about building beehives and I can comment. Meantime, I will link to some threads on beesource where we discussed many of the questions involved in determining what equipment is needed to keep bees.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?249192
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?316006
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?320011
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?320759
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?321069
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?321209
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?325985
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?327308
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?327565

[Worth1]

I have the lathe stand height figured out.
It needs to be 18 inches tall and 5 feet 3 inches long including wheels.
I can make the whole thing out of one sheet of 3/4 plywood some 2X4's and have a few little scraps left over.
This will allow me to use the lathe in comfort at my height with both shoulders square to my body and not be humped up.
Here is the sheet of plywood with the cutting grid and a representation of the lathe on the completed stand.

I dont have all of the fine cutting size and wood joint details down but they are in my head that is all the matters.
The lathe will fit nicely where the drill press is with the head stock on one side and the tail stock on the other.
Worth
Lathe stand cut out..jpg

[salix]

Worth, a probable silly question. Is the lathe always used while standing? Can it be made adjustable height so one could use it sitting on a stool?

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by salix

Worth, a probable silly question. Is the lathe always used while standing? Can it be made adjustable height so one could use it sitting on a stool?

Anything is possible but most people use them standing.
There are people that have to use them sitting in a chair.

Worth

[Worth1]

Well I dont guess anyone got the connection.
This thread is about old school tool use and the lathe.
Darrel came on and brought up table saw.
Then it was bees.
Then it was how to make bee hives like I said no worries.
What I have done is incorporate all of these subjects into one drawing.
It may or may not be a good idea that is for the bees to decide.
The lathe stand will be cut out on the table saw.
The two boxes that are for the stand are bee hives.
Do you think the bees will put up with someone running a wood lathe on top of their homes or would that be asking too much?
Is it carrying a multi use tool and tasking just a little too far?
It would ((bee)) a hoot to set the lathe up outside in an open shed with the openings to the hives pointing to the back and inviting someone to use the lathe.

Worth

[dmforcier]

Are you willing to wear a bee suit while turning?

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by dmforcier

Are you willing to wear a bee suit while turning?

It would be like trying to run a butcher shop with a pet tiger.

I had something like that with one of my fixed Tom cats.
If you brought a sack of cat food in the house you had to get it in a safe cat proof container fast.
He would attack it rip it open and start eating.
He tried to run of with the thanksgiving turkey one time.
He was 32 inches long from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail all mussel and no fat.
He guarded the front porch and ran off all strangers like a dog.

Worth

[dmforcier]

I had a big boy too, though he was dainty at table. He would run off dogs. One day he tried to run off a coyote.

[Worth1]

The cat had good table manners the turkey was a bird and he loved to eat bird.
My wife had it on the table and it wasn't cooked yet.
He jumped a good 6 feet and in flight sunk his teeth in the bird as he went by thinking it would come with him.
It didn't.
I knew something was up when I saw his whiskers twitching.

Worth