Shopsmith Forums

rpd wrote:Great to see this come up again.
Coincidently I started building a mason bee house myself this last weekend after not getting to it for several years.
Still a work in progress.
Here are a couple of photos

bee house front.JPG

bee house angle.JPG

Glad you are getting to your bee house! It funny how long it seems for me to get to things I want to do and even simple projects.......

Ed

Have you gotten your wood for the project yet? I have, and this is the two pieces sitting against the garage door this afternoon. You know the rule here, no picture then it didn't happen.
The taller board, the 1 x 6 x 6' was $2.99. It is what they call #3 standard board. The pile of 1 x 8 x 4' of this quality was down to just 3 boards and they were pretty ruff looking. So I had to go to the #2 quality boards to get one, and the price jumped to $7.79 which turned out to be the price of a 1 x 8 x 10' board on the sales receipt so I have to go back tomorrow and get this corrected.......... I'll let you know when I have a real price for that piece but as you can see this is not an expensive project.

So now if the weather holds I will start making saw dust tomorrow. If you want to keep up on the project go get some wood! Sorry but I know how these things go and if you don't do it now it might never happen.

Ed

When to the store and got the price fixed. The 4 foot 1 x 8 should have been just $2.89. Adjustment made and I'm ready if the weather is tomorrow.

Ed

Getting my lumber first thing in the morning!

Is that Cedar?

ERLover wrote:Is that Cedar?

No just "white wood" most likely pine. It does have some interesting color to it.

Ed

Well I'm up and the weather report is the rain will hold off until later in the day. BUT it just 39 degrees right now up from freezing when I got up at 5:30.

As soon as it reaches the mid 40's I get started.

Until that happens I'll get started by giving some general information.

This build is primarily a beginner project so in that spirit things will be simple for the sake of someone just beginning. I will show you a way of doing things and this is not to imply that this is THE way. I will try to add some details that can help you in future projects as well. I will assume you know how to and have aligned your shopsmith to within your abilities.

We will be starting on the process by cutting up the trays, that is part A on the drawing. Even on the drawing I have indicated that the very end of the board is cut off. You do this even on simple projects like this to make sure you have a squared end to work with. It is also likely that your cut will be of better quality then the factory hack.

I will be using a combination blade for all the cuts. For projects like this a comb blade is perfect. You can do cross cuts and rip cuts with just that one blade. If you have only separate blades then at least I hope you have sprung for an arbor for each one. It's worth it as blade changes are so fast that way. This is an advantage for the shopsmith over other saws so make use of it.

If something comes up where you do not feel safe doing an operation then don't just do it. I will attempt to show you safe ways of doing things but if you know of a way that you feel safer doing it then go that way.

The things I will be doing can all be done on a shopsmith. I will be using a router table for portions of mine because I have a new router and guides that I want to play with. I will show you the set up on the shopsmith and the technique is in principle the same except you will be routing from above with the shopsmith(unless you have the powerpro and dual tilt and what to try that from the under side).

I will be showing this on a 520 powerpro so if you have different machine you might have to do things a little different and if you come in to a situation where you can't see a clear way of setting your machine up to do the operation just post the question here and we will see what we can do to answer it.

So until I have some pictures to post and wood cut hang in there and if you still haven't got your wood and router bit you still have time........

Ed

First things first. I measured the wood I just got and they are undersized in width from the numbers I used. So I went back in and redid the drawing. I'll post that in just a bit.

I also ran in to same rain this afternoon so somethings had to get done pretty fast and I wasn't able to take some photos that I might have liked to but I don't think that will be an issue as once you have seen part of this the other part is pretty much the same thing.

I have all the parts cut but will not start assembly until better weather. In the mean time I will post instructions and photos to get us all to the point I am now.

Right now I need to try and get my walk in, and hope to stay dry. When I get back from that I'll post the updated drawings and down load photos.

Ed

Gee the walk took almost an hour! Anyway we are back and not wet so the weather held for that hour. Now it can rain.

As I mentioned this is the latest and greatest drawing.
The main change is to the width of the stock and the resulting changes due to that change.

I'm now going to work on downloading and sizing some photos for the next few posts.

Ed

I got my pieces cut out using the previous dimensions. I actually had 7 1/4"x 3/4" and 5 1/2"x 3/4". Lucky me. I'm waiting on my 1/4" router chuck right now. I might try to come up with a jig in the mean time so I can use my handheld router.