Foundationless frames

[Sweet!]

I looked at bee thinking. It is quite interesting to me that they sell top bars for their top bar hives for more than the entire langstroth frame. I cannot imagine that the bees would care enough about cedar top bars to warrant the expense. They do look beautiful but really... Most of the time they are under the cover anyway.

Cool. Just throwing it out there so you were aware of the competition. I will say, the Langs are well designed and assembled easily.

[Eric Bosworth]

The langstroth frames are at bee thinking are identical to the Walter Kelley F type frames. When I first got my bees I ordered 10 for 2 reasons. I was just shy of $200 for free shipping and I figured I would use them as a pattern. The picture on bee thinking is exactly what I got from Walter Kelley.

[Sweet!]

Yep, they do look the same. I can't really see what they used as a foundation guide on the top bar--though it sounds right based on the description (yours and the website's). Cheaper than at Bee Thinking, too. Good luck!

[Eric Bosworth]

Ok... I made my first 4 1.25" wide frames completely from scratch. I have a lot of boards cut up to make a bunch more now but a larch tree fell across one of my cross country ski trails and I cut it into frames. A word of advise... It was kind of neat to take a log and turn it into something usable but I don't recommend using a table saw as a saw mill. My father is getting logs ready for somebody to cut up with a portable sawmill. He bought a new tractor and needs to add on to a building to house it.

The nice thing about cutting the log from scratch was that I really didn't have much scrap because what would otherwise have been scrap I used for bottom boards and I have a bunch of pieces to use for end bars cut to length I just need to cut the edges and slots for the top and bottom boards. When the guy comes with the saw mill I think I will have him cut some wide 1.25" and 1.375" boards for end bars. That said, Mr. Bush made a comment that I thought was good and I will do in the future when I get the bit... He said something about 1 or two passes per part. For top bars I have been making a pass on each side to make the comb guide and then ripping it off and going to the next one. I am going to get a tongue and groove set and cut the comb guide in one pass. I have to say that I am regretting my decision to standardize on deeps. My original thinking was that with deeps I could make a box out of 1x10s without ripping it. Ripping boards for boxes might be easier than finding a way to cut edges on side bars. OldMech's method of trimming the bottom edges of the end pieces doesn't work with deeps. Funny thing... You can put a medium frame in a deep box (the bees might screw up the comb at the bottom but it can be done) but you can't put a deep frame in a medium box...

[OldMech]

You can put a deep in TWO medium boxes though 
   You can also keep your eyes open at yard sales for a jointer and use that to rip off 1/8th on each side of a side bar for deep frames.  Takes a little longer but doable.

[Eric Bosworth]

Hummm.... I'll have to take that into consideration.