Week 20 - Design and label the Crown Board and build it

This week I am starting to design the crown board of the hive and I will also label it. The crown board basically acts as the lid of the hive, it separates the super box from the roof. This is done because the roof on the hive can sometimes sit flat on top and overhang the side or it can sit flush on top, but will be shallow and have a space inside it. The crown board separates the roof from the bees as they might start building comb in the roof cavity and it will cause a mess when the roof is removed. It can also act as a feed station, as the crown board has a hole in it to allow the bees to feed on ambrosia fondant (used to feed the bees in colder months when there is no abundance of pollen), and when it is not being used you can simply cover the hole for the rest of the year.

My early designs of the crown board of the hive are illustrated below and labelled:

 Below are the pictures of me building the crown board of the hive at the different stages:

In this picture you can see that I am using the off cut from the piece of wood I used to make the super box, I did this reduce me from consuming to much wood that I could have avoided from using.

This is a picture after I have cut them down into the correct lengths (the same as the super box), and because they were off-cuts from the previous super box I didn't have to change the width of them, which is good as it would be very challenging to do so with the circular saw.

This is after I have drilled the holes, I only drilled 4 holes on each plank because there is no need to drill extra as it won't be supporting much weight and is already strong enough. 

Now I need to make the floor of the crown board, this will just be a thin wooden board that will only be about 5mm thick. So, I found a old wooden tray that had the perfect board on the bottom and I decided to use it. So I removed all the handles and side of the tray until I was left with the board.

You can see that I removed the board from the tray and it is the perfect width and thickness for the crown board, and I can cut it down to fit on the frame.

Now I started to make the frame of the crown board, as usual I used wood glue and screws to hold it together, I am applying the wood glue onto the wood in this picture.

This is after I have joined the two pieces of wood together with the glue and screws.

This is just before I placed the final wooden plank on top of the frame to make it whole. Now I have finished the frame of the crown board.

Now that the frame is complete, I have to add the wooden board to the bottom. This is it after I have cut it down to size, so it can fit flush on the bottom of the frame.

This is a picture of the crown board sitting perfectly on top of the frame to make sure that it doesn't overhang from the sides and it is ready to be fixed to it.

To fix the board to the frame of the crown board, I am using nails - this is because using screws will be a lot more time consuming, especially since I will have to pre-drill every hole.    

Also in the picture I have hammered the point of nail slightly down, this is a trick my dad taught me, it will help prevent the wood from splitting. 

You can see that the nail is slightly shorter compared to the next exact same nail.

I first hammered the nails, to each one of the corners to fix into place and to make sure it fitted perfectly, before I permanently fix it to the frame.     

This is after I have added several more nails to the board, securing it more to the frame. I added 3 more nails in-between each corner, so there should be a total of 16 nails altogether on the board.

This is what the crown board looks like finished with all the nails added, the crown board also fits flush with the frame with none of it hanging out. Now I only need to add the hole in the crown board, and then it will be finished.

It took me a while to find the drill bit that could drill the perfect size hole for me, this is why it is quite dark in the picture as it had gotten late by the time I had found a piece.

But this is the final product finished with the frame, board and hole all done and it is now ready to be used in my beehive.

While building the crown board I encountered several problems, I had to overcome these problems while building the crown board to make it perfect, these were:

1) The first problem was that I forgot to acquire a drill bit piece that could drill the hole on         the board.

• The solution was that I had to wait several hours until my dad had came home from work and told me where I could find the piece I needed.

2) Another problem I suppose, was that I forgot to get a wooden board for the floor of the hive!

• The solution to fix this, was that I found a old wooden tray which I could use and was the perfect size but I had to take it to pieces in order to get the board attached to it.