The Toy Chest

Early last fall I promised my son and his wife that I would make a toy chest for our grandsons. Delivery would be on Christmas day.

....Well last week I could no longer procrastinate on my promise; so work began using the few, crude hand held tools that I had in my unheated log barn. After about '45 thousand cuts (... and recuts)' I put together the 'toy chest barn' pictured below.

Despite cold feet and fingers, it is fun to see the mental image transform into a physical stucture which I hope the boys will enjoy.

Dimensions:

Barn - 48" long x 24"wide x 30" at the barn peak.

Silo - 36" high (top of staves) x 6.5" wide. to the top of the staves.

Storage:

Lift the roof panel off on the facing side and back lean-to section of the barn. I decided against hinges, thinking that little fingers could be pinched.

The barn doors can be slid open or closed.

The silo cap can be lifted off and the top 12" can hold some more 'stuff'. The bottom 24" contain two structural support disks.

How Sweet It Is!

Yesterday I extracted and bottled 30+ pounds of honey. Since I don't have a honey extractor that removes honey from the comb by a centrifuge action, I followed the suggestion by a fellow hobbist beekeeper. I purchased two 5 gallon plastic buckets. Drilled 20 plus 3/8th inch holes in the bottom of the top bucket lined with a nylon, 5 gallon paint screen. This bucket was then placed ontop of the bottom bucket, with a large hole in it's lid. The bottom bucket served as the collecting bucket. A faucet from my scrap plumbing pile was added and wha-laa!

... let the honey extraction begin

The plastic frames loaded with comb honey are scrapped into a collecting pan.

The scappings are added to the top bucket to begin a 24 hour gravitational separation of honey from the wax. The honey drips into the bottom collecting bucket.

While the jars filled, I designed a label.