Nuc Box, Beehives and Life

If you read blogs long enough, you invariable encounter ones where, after so often, it seems like the author must have been conscripted, dead or reading A Song of Ice and Fire, then crying in the corner whilst waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish writing the last two books.

As it happens only one of those things was happening to me and now, through a variety of forces I'm making things and losing some of the acquired apathy I've been feeling for the last couple of months. It's a good feeling.

First thing on the agenda, tomatoes, because what's the 7th week before last frost without tomato planting? Depressing, that's what.

Labeling cups and arranging them by cultivar, we're starting 13 different types, I'm most excited for the Azoychka, Amana Orange and Amish paste. 

We planted about 400 different types, this group is the Amana Orange, and they about a 92% germination rate! We intend to sell about half of the seedlings around 7 weeks, so people can get local heirloom plants instead of whatever Burbee sells to the hardware stores and BORG.

Next stop pollination. Which means either Q-Tip swabbing or bees. I'm lazy and I like honey so guess what I'm doing... 

One of my friends, an avid beekeeper, climber and general badass named Sarah, was asking about a couple of different pieces of woodenware related to catching swarms, and rearing queens. One of the pieces we spoke about was a nucleus hive, which is a small hive or box that can hold about half the frames of a standard Langstroth hive. I built one, like this.

Then Sarah started talking more about bees, and I started getting excited hence this whole sort of revival going on. I got to work scoping out my roof, and building on campus (because they have roofs too) and I started designing my top-bar hive, and continuing the build for the Warre hive I started a while ago.

TBH, I still have a lot of CAD to finish, I'm going to add some sort of quilt/insulating layer like the Warre hive in an effort to maintain temperature when it gets opened up. Which is Warre's nadiring idea to keep heat in the brood nest.  

The Warre hive box. I have a minimum of two more of these, bottom board and quilt/roof to finish. Then maybe build a whole 'nother set.

So, see? Still woodworking, hardly fine furniture though (I think I'm screwing together the next set of boxes, the finger joints are nice, but they use a lot of wood and take a lot of time.) But now I don't feel bad about writing about not-furniture, and it feels great.

The introduction from my old blog, reposted.

The following is what I posted about 7 months ago on a new blog I was starting during a tumultuous period of my life. A lot has changed and in the last few weeks I've been getting my drive back. I've set some ambitious farm/agricultural goals for this season, and built some cool things that are hardly fine furniture. It's coming back together. 

"Hi, my name is Trevor, I'm 26 and I live in Philadelphia.

I'm having a crisis.

You see I've got two major loves that pitch me down a rabbit hole nearly daily. I love to learn, by doing, reading or hearing what others have to say. I'm also deeply motivated by doing what's right for the planet in a long term legitimately sustainable set or practices.

The need to balance these motivations makes me want to quit my job and move into the woods nearly weekly; but that brings a whole slew of problems stemming from my debts (University, what a brilliant idea, "Here, spend $120,000 and 4 years doing what we say to figure out what you want your life to be about) (I'm out of debt as of 2/6/2014!). Ultimately I look at one or two workshops, maybe $1000 in leisure reading (that you could borrow), a visit to Dickinson's campus, hiking in the Wissahickon park, and working at Weavers Way co-op for my working member shifts as the most influential experiences in my "green" education. Added together they account for about 3% of the time, money and effort I spent (along with my parents, and the government) getting a "practical education". I made awesome, lifelong friends, and yes I had the opportunity to discover these things partly through college, but that doesn't mean I couldn't find them without.

I find it funny, here I am 3 years into a career after college, yes I use my skills gained and interests in my work but when I go home at night I find myself browsing biodiesel, waste vegetable oil heaters and cook-stoves, renewable energy, self sufficiency, eco-minimalism, beehives, farmland to buy, Sketch-Uping tiny house plans, etc. The poignant take away is that these are all words you'd find archived on my internet history from high school. Maybe if I started reading soon enough I would have been fortunate enough to become that amazing college drop out, who's well adjusted, completely focused in life and totally at peace."

Yes I've quoted myself, I know it's uncouth. It's fine.

Major Changes

Firstly to all of you who have followed this blog as it directly relates to woodworking, thanks. I've had fun writing and capturing some of what goes on in my head, and on the bench for the last few years.

I'm going to me migrating a few posts over, and re-title the blog to more adequately contain all the things I want to talk about. Mostly using the same voice and platform as I did with the woodworking to cover my other passions like small scale farming, tiny houses and a downhill spiral into honeybees that a friend of mine seems to be leading (knowingly or not) me into. I thought of breaking up these pieces of my life into different blogs, but that's too much damn work. Re-titleing, addressing and expanding what I'm working on seems to be the more cohesive option.  

Store Updated with Spoons!

Finally! I've been able to put up some of the spoons I've been carving in the "TWD Store" page. Time to hunt some more wood, fortunately they are pretty slothful creatures and are easy to catch.

More Tiny House Model

Two things recently occurred to me (okay, I never forgot, I just ignored it) that I have some photos of the tiny house model farther along. Also that I've been a lazy ass in both posting, and working on that model. In an effort to log my work, here we go.

About 90 percent of the framing finished, almost looks like a real house if you imagine the table isn't there and I'm standing 25 feet up a tree.

 Storage loft floor laid.

Front porch area and 'bay window' framing.

This is the sucky part, the roof on the Cypress 20 is crazy. Why we have buildings hooded in anything other than gable or shed is beyond me. What do I know, I'm not an architect? I just build stuff.

Swedish Spoon Carving

Last weekend, I finally got my hands on some paper birch to carve into spoons. I'd been struggling with my occasional spoon carving efforts chalking up my problems to not grasping technique or quite the right tools. As it turns out half my problem was attempting to make dry wood serve my purpose.

I have a small dream to live on a tiny homestead with a girl, raise rabbits, chickens, maybe a pig or dairy goats and lots of food crops. Chopping wood, baking bread and carving bowls and spoons. This week I've been making huge progress on the spoon carving, I've had in axe in my hand or been carving on my lunch breaks and sometimes for a few hours in the evening after work. I'll show my progress sequentially...

Everything together, tools and the spoons I've carved so far. They are in order from left to right. The last four are ones I feel best about. I'll test paints and practice carving details on the first two trashy ones. 

 Here's a shot of the bowl on the third (and beginning of the better looking spoons), it needs a little refinement but I'm starting to get happy here.

 Here is the beginning of the 5th scoop, for serving. The tape on my thumb is to give it a break from all the pressure against the blade and blank. I don't have a callous here yet and I wore through my finger with a few days of heavy carving.

 Here's the underside or keel of that same scoop. It has nicer lines and is more left/right symmetrical than my earlier attempts. I find the hardest thing about spoons to be getting symmetrical geometry without being ambidextrous. With grain and hand motions some cuts have to be done differently one side to the other. I'm getting better though.

 The wide bevels on this flow from the bowl, to the handle. Refinement is necessary after it dries up a bit.

This is the first one I've planned out some carving and painting for. I have an idea of what I'm going to do here, but need to draw some more.

There are a few people I've been reading about, looking at spoon images or conversing with that have been a huge inspiration. I've got Jogge's video, two wonderful spoons from Jarrod (and a lot of inspiring spoon porn), and a wealth of info, tutorial, history and craft lecture from Robin Wood, Barn the Spoon also has a ton of videos that I've found helpful and a living I find really admirable. I wish there were such a thing as a peddler's license in the US.

There's only a few spoons left in the wood I've got left over, I'll have to find a source for some more green birch, beech, apple or sycamore. Many trees have been taken down on campus but they are ring porous. 

Building a Tiny Home

...Well sort of. This is a model of a Tumbleweed Tiny House that I'm working on. It's a really exciting project for me, I get to bust out all the cool skills I don't normally use building furniture, 3D printing, laser engraving and working really small.

Naturally I started with the foundation.

 I couldn't find balsa wood in the correct scale for dimensional lumber or the size of the structural steel for the trailer (which I've made out of wood) so I milled my own.

The wheels themselves are laser cut, the wheel wells are 3D printed from a CAD model I created. I may wind up building a fleet of these things so having the ability to hit the button on a few dozen highly complicated parts makes my life a lot easier. 

The trailer is built faithfully to the new Tumbleweed trailer, and as many of the construction details as possible will go into this model. The goal is a cutaway/breakaway model that can show all the elements of construction from trailer, insulation, subfloor, framing, sheathing, utilities, electric, roofing, windows and entry... Even the kitchen sink, which I'm entertaining the idea of producing molds to stamp small aluminum sinks. To answer further questions, yes, I'm going over the top with this.

Our scale, this is one of the building boards I'm using as "full scale" plans, it includes trailer plan view and wall framing elevation, and a ruler down to one inch increments that is 20' long for layout of material.

Pile of 2x4s freshly sawn from spruce. 

The first group of studs for the long wall, match planed to identical length. 

 Lastly, an overhead view of the workspace, pile of lumber, the laser engraved builder board and some of the tools I'm using.