Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Construction lessons

Despite my previous comment about the budget supers, after putting them together, they are noticeably lower quality. Possibly even the commercial supers are problematic, but again, it's tough to tell them apart.

The most troublesome defect is that some boards are shorter than others. When I assemble a super with one of these boards, the resulting super doesn't rest evenly on a flat surface. If you place that super on top of another, there's a gap between the two supers. Will the bees fill this up? The gap is usually not more than 0.25". I tried chiseling/sanding down some of the bigger offenders, but I'm not as skilled at woodworking as I imagined. That is, I made them slightly worse.

Also, with three or four of the boards I received (again, they may or may not have been budget supers), the wood was not straight. In all but one of these boards, strategic nailing straightened them sufficiently. The irreconcilable board resulted in a slightly off super.

Finally, a note on the 7D nails I bought from Mann Lake-- they're really not necessary. You can buy stronger, twisted 8D galvanized nails from Lowes or Home Depot for about the same price. They bend much less than the ones from Mann Lake, and you won't ever have to pay shipping.

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