WoodHenge Part II

We decided our firepit area needed some sprucing up.  Something to make it more inviting and more a of a 'destination'.  We came up with WoodHenge, a hexagonal porch swing structure around the firepit.

The first step was to lay out an hexagon.  Laying out a perfect square takes a bit of careful attention.  A hexagon is definitely a level or two harder.

There are some formulas and techniques for doing this that we found out on google.  Unfortunately, most of them require some special tools like compasses and angle measuring devices which I didn't have on me at the time.

Despite using "bear skins and stone knives" for tools, we manged to get the hexagon pretty dang close.

From 2014-08-17

One of the challenges we faced was the dirt we were planting the posts in was about 6 inches deep, and mostly limestone after that..  I was afraid one or more posts, which have to be in a precise location, would end up right over solid rock.

With this needing to be a precise hexagon, moving the post to a less rocky place was not an option and I was deathly afraid I would get five posts in and find the sixth one was impossible.

We lucked out though and were able to put all the posts where they're supposed to go.  That doesn't mean we didn't have to do a lot of rock hammering.

After a lot of pounding with the breaker bar, we persevered and got all the posts at least 23-25 inches deep.

From 2014-08-17

Although it was sturdy enough with just the posts and beams, we decided to put an additional stabilizing ring to prevent rotation and it also acts as a nice highlight.

From 2014-09-20

A view from below

From 2014-09-20

Here's a flyover shot from the drone at twilight.  The upper hexagon ring really sets it off.  I still need to get it stained though so the color matches up better.

From 2014-09-15

Now to add the swings, more rock, gravel and finish staining.

From Pictures

Woodhenge

My latest project is to build an hexagonal shaped open gazebo with porch swings. I'd seen one on the internet a while back and thought it would be a nice feature around the fire pit and a fun challenge to build. Plus it'd be another chance to use up some of our cedar log surplus.

From 2014-08-02

One of the problems is the ground is super rocky and with the fixed hexagonal shape, you don't have much leeway on where the pole goes.  If you cheat it over to softer dirt, it won't be a hexagon anymore.  That means if you hit rock, too bad, you're just going to have to break through it.

Well, we definitely hit rock.  I think I put on a pound or two of muscle pounding the 3-4" thick limestone with the 45 pound breaker bar.  It was pretty tough work pounding it over and over again.

In the end, we were able to get each of the posts about 24" deep and the diameter was just a couple inches wider than the pole.  I figure with the super tight hole and almost solid rock sides, 24" ought to be plenty deep.

From 2014-08-17

Once the cement had hardended, it was time to cut the poles down to size.  We decided that 7' ought to be about right.  One downside of using raw cedar is that the poles aren't perfectly straight.  Some have little bends in them that we were hoping would get cut off during the resizing.

It looks like cut down helped with straightening up.  Unfortunately I ran out of light and time to finish and decided to throw up a cross beam to get a preview of what the finished product might look like.

From 2014-08-17

The crossbeam is definitely sturdy.  Lifting a 6x6x8 7 feet in the air is not a feat for the faint of heart.  It took everything I had to lift it up there.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I did it twice.  The first time I decided to hang on it to simualte what it would be like to swing.  Well, all I ended up accomplishing is knocking it off the poles.  Luckily it fell forward instead of falling back and crushing me.

From 2014-08-17

Be sure to check in for more updates in the coming weeks.  If the final product turns out half as cool as what I have pictured in my head, it's going to be awesome.

Payoff-Collecting the Honey

After a year of preparation and hard work, we finally came to the point where it was time to collect the honey. Since this was our first attempt, we were a little nervous about doing it right and how things would go.
 

From 2014-07-02

After all, one of the hives, which we've creatively called hive #1, is mean as can be and the bees attack relentlessly no matter how big or small the maintenance I'm doing. I wasn't looking forward to how they'd react with me pulling two or three supers.

From 2014-07-02

Sawyer and Sammy joined me to help out with picture taking and lifting and moving supers.

From 2014-07-02

There are several methods for clearing the bees out of a super. You can pull a frame one at time and brush them off, use chemicals to drive them down into the hive, or use a leaf blower to clear them out with extreme predjudice.

From 2014-07-02

I guess some people have nice bees that are so sweet they call them their 'ladies'. Mine are no ladies. They're mean as hell, so I didn't feel bad about taking the leaf blower to them and I definitely don't call them 'ladies', in fact I have another descriptive name in mind.

Overall the process went pretty well. I didn't get any stings at all and Sawyer only got one that tagged him on the cheek when his veil got off centered. We had a moment of panic when he yelled he'd been stung. As I turned to check it out, it looked like a whole bunch had gotten up inside his veil. I told him to take off and run through the bushes to get them off him.

 Sawyer took me at my word and ran so far that Sammy had to get on the quad and go find him. Luckily all was well and we couldn't even see where the sting was once Sammy pulled out the stinger.

From 2014-07-02

We were hoping to get a bunch of good pictures but there were so many mad bees about that Sammy got inside the truck with the window rolled up. 

Needless to say, we didn't get too many good shots after that. However, there were definitely some lessons learned. I think next time I'll using B-gone or some chemical like that to drive the bees down before removing the supers and using the leaf blower.

There were just too many bees still hiding inside the super and it took a lot of blowing to get them out. Also, in hindsight, I think I should have taken 4 supers instead of three.

By the time we got to the 4th, the bees were so mad that I basically chickened out. Using some of the chemicals might have made it a little easier. Even so, we still came away with 3 completely full supers weighing a total of about 130 pounds.

From 2014-07-02

To extract the honey, we were lucky enough to be able to borrow the extracting tank and tools from our good friend Dusty. It saved a lot time and trouble being able to use those instead of renting from the bee club.

From 2014-07-02

The first step in extracting the honey is pull each frame, one-by-one, out of the super. Each super, in my arrangment, has 10 frames.  I number them to help make sure I put them back in the same order when I'm inspecting them.

From 2014-06-28

The first three frames are in the extractor.  Lot's of honey left to extract.

From 2014-07-01

A perfectly capped frame, ready to have the wax cut off and put in the extractor.

From 2014-07-01

This is what it looks like after the caps are cut off.  The purpose of the strainer is to let honey drain out that is still in the cut off comb.  It's surprising how much more honey  you can get from the cut comb.

From 2014-07-01

Once the lid is removed off the "mason jar", the frame is put in the extractor in preparation for spinning the honey out.

From 2014-07-01

The extractor holds three frames at a time and gets quite wobbly as you spin the crank, due to the frames not being perfectly balanced. As more and more of the honey is extracted it gets less and less wobbly

From 2014-07-01

After reversing the frames and running the extraction again, all the honey is spun out. Here's what the comb looks like after the process.

From 2014-07-01

Draining out the freshly extracted honey from the extractor. There's still a lot of bits of wax and debris prior to filtering

From 2014-06-28

Here's the honey going through the first stage of filtering.  Lot's of wax debris. Don't extract honey without expecting to get sticky. It can't be done.

From 2014-06-28

After a second stage of filtering through an even smaller filter, we have the finished product.  Seven and a half gallongs of beautiful golden honey.

From 2014-07-01

Half-Cord Firewood Shed

I recently had the urge to build something.  Since free time is in short supply these days, the project, by necessity, had to be short i.e. something I could complete in a weekend or two.

I'd been tossing around the idea of building a firewood shed and this seemed the perfect time to do it.  Also, our fire pit area was kind of large and needed something to define it a little better and give it a focus point.

As with all my projects, one of the major goals is to use available materials as much as possible and spend as little as possible.  For this project, the items I needed to purchase were nails, cement for the post holes, and 2x4's.

From 2014-06-15

After carefully looking at all the angles, and potential locations.  I found a spot that looked nice but also had enough soil for me to get at least 18" down on the post holes before hitting rock.  There's nothing more frustrating than getting 3 posts in then hitting impenetrable rock on the last one.

To kick things off, I went out to the log pile and found some good posts that were fairly close in size and had about a 4" diameter.

From 2014-06-15

I was able to get all the post holes at least 18" inches deep and in some cases 20" or more before I hit solid rock.  I then back filled with cement and let them dry for a few days.

I learned the hard way, through previous projects, that most construction materials are designed around the 8x2x4.  If you build something on a different measurment than that standard, then everything that follows will be off and require special cutting and be a general pain in the rear.

With that being said, I placed the cedar posts so that the ends of the outer beam 2x4's would extend evenly with the outer edge of the post, so an endcap 2x4 could be nailed on.

From 2014-06-15

I lag bolted the 2x4's to the posts so it would be sturdier and less likely to crack than if I'd used nails.  I then started cutting off the tops of the posts flush with the upper beam 2x4's.

From 2014-06-15

It was now time to build the rafters.  I'd never done a peaked roof before so I was a little nervous about how well it would actually work.  Ideally, I probably should've gone with a shallower pitch, but my only angle tool was a 45 degree so that's what I ended up going with.  At least I won't have to worry about snow piling up and caving it in.

From 2014-06-15

In order to securely tie the rafters to the beams, I did a horizontal 2x4 that went under the beams on each end.  That should be enough to keep the lid on in any weather.

From 2014-06-15

Originally I was going to do the horizontal piece on all 4 rafters, but after I put the two ends on, it seemed like overkill so I just toe-nailed them in.

From 2014-06-15

I had a couple 1x6's laying around that I used to tie all the rafters together.  The were a little thicker than I'd ideally like, but a guiding principle of this project is going cheap, so I went with them.

From 2014-06-15

The two major artistic elements to this project are the cedar poles and the rusted tin roof pieces we salvaged from the old house.  As I fitted the tin sheets, I was glad to see that following my "8ft" rule worked, they lined up perfectly.  I had about an inch of overhang on each end, which was ideal for bending down to protect the corners.

From 2014-06-15

The finished shed.  It took about 10 hours of work and $50 dollars in materials.  Not too bad for a nice looking centerpiece to our firepit area.

From 2014-06-15

Now that I finished that, I guess I'm going to have to tuck in to the big log pile.

From 2014-06-15

First Beehive Inspection of the Season

After a long wait, the weather finally cooperated by being sunny and over 55 degrees on a Saturday so I could do my first beehive inspection of the season.

My main goals I hoped to accomplish were  1) putting a screened bottom board on my agressive hive, 2) put a 4th super on the aggressive hive, and 3) add 3rd super on the new hive.

Here's Seth smoking the bees in preparation for tearing the hive down.

From 2014-04-07

Here's the new bottom board we put on.  For those of you who don't know what a bottom board is, it's the new, unpainted wood on the bottom of the hive.

There are several reasons this needed to be done.  The first was for Varroa mite control.  Apparently, when Varroa mites are born, the larvae fall through the screened bottom board and die in the grass below.  If the bottom board isn't screened the larvae get a chance to grow and will climb back up into the hive and will keep infecting the bees.  Varroa mites are an insidious problem that many blame for the mysterious drop in the bee populations.

From 2014-04-15

The hive is looking healthy.  Lot's of bees crawling all over.

From 2014-04-07

Inspecting the frames.  This one hasn't produced much yet.

From 2014-04-07

When we pulled the top super, we found some drone larvae forming in the burr comb in between the supers.  I was a little freaked out at first because I thought they were queen swarm cells, but a guy at the ag center got me straightened out.

From 2014-04-07

Thank goodness for my new veil and jacket.  My hives seem to be really aggressive and attack the crap outta me whenever I open the hives up.  However, with my good suit, I'm usually able to make it through without getting stung.  Here I am inspecting a brood frame.

From 2014-04-07

One more shot of the drone larvae.  I guess it's better to accidentally kill drones than workers.

From 2014-04-07

Prepping Traps

It was a rainy day last Saturday so I decided to pull out the rainy day chore list. At the top of the list was dyeing and waxing my coyote traps.

The first step in dyeing the trap is pressure wash or boil them to get the protective grease coating off.  Once that's done, you leave them out for a week or two to develop a coat of rust.

From 2014-03-26

I'd previously boiled these traps a while back, plus they'd been buried most of last winter, which hopefully took all the smell off of them.  They've also been hanging for a long time and developed an nice coat of rust.

From 2014-03-26

Here's my boiling pot.  Once it starts boiling, I'll add the dye.

From 2014-03-26

Testing to see if the trap would fit in the boiling pot.  It ended up not being deep enough, so I had to switch out to a 5 gallon pail I had laying around.

From 2014-03-26

While I was waiting for the pot to boil, I took a drive past the old abandoned car in the woods.  It's a cool old car.  I'd imagine a good restorer would love to get his hands on it.

From 2014-03-26

Unfortunately I got busy and forgot to take a final picture of the trap. I'll take one next time I go down.