Building Bling Bee Bodies.

Making these little bees out of wood is a little challenging. The pieces are fairly small and a difficult to hang onto sometimes. I will admit that I have had small bits fly out of my hand while sanding with a Dremel tool while making these. Usually this results in a loss of production time while crawl around the floor looking for where they have landed. I often make a couple of extra pieces just in case they can't be found. This seems easier than keeping my shop spotless ! That said, let me show you how I make Billy bee bodies!

To the right is the pattern I made for myself. It's not fancy. Each body is made from a 1/2" diameter wooden ball for a thorax and two other pieces made from scraps from my wood bin for the head and abdomen, added on opposite sides of the ball.  The design is a little excessive. These bees are very rugged. In a large part it is so they fit in with the construction style of the rest of the automata piece. There is no templating used here, just this little sketch and freehand drawing profiles onto the stock. The sketch does not so show the wings just to keep things simple for the time being. You will see how I add them later.

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Pile of abdomen stock ready for cutting.

To start, this is my pile of abdomen pieces. They are 1/2" high and 1/2" wide. (This is a tops down view.) The stock is long enough for me to hang onto while running them through the scroll saw. Rather than cut the side profile on the scroll saw as I often do on larger pieces, I simply sketched the side profile on the shapes I cut out and shaped them with a 1/4" sanding drum on a Dremel tool. I then hand sand to a smooth finish.

Next, it's time to prepare to put a few things together. I sand a small flat on the end of each section as a gluing surface  and drill a small hole  in the centre to insert a pin for strength before gluing them together. The photos below show the process. The trickiest operation is to sand a flat on the 1/2" balls. Hold them securely with pliers and sand about a 1/4" diameter flat. This is really where you can launch a 1/2" diameter projectile across the shop if you are not careful. Notice that  I did take the photos with the 1" belt sander turned off!  For the abdomens you can just hold the pieces with your hand, but still be careful and try to keep things perpendicular . The last thing to do is to drill a 1/16" hole in the centre of the flat. I use my Dremel tool to make drill these holes - more control!
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Sand a small flat on the ball.

Sand a flat on the abdomen

Drill a 1/16" hole in both pieces.

Below is what things look like just before the first stage of glue up. You can see a collection of abdomens and the thoraxes ( small balls ) ready with holes in the ends and short pieces of brass rods inserted to act as stiffeners. I use a  small dab of quick set epoxy to glue the pieces together. I use epoxy not only for strength but because it  sets quickly so It allows me to keep moving onto the next steps of assembly quickly rather than waiting for glue to set. It may be overkill, but it also creates a nice filet between the pieces if it is smoothed slightly while setting.

Fitted, waiting to be glued.

Shows length of pins.

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Now, it is on to adding the heads. They are the smallest piece of the body assembly so I add them differently has they are tough to hold and shape. First, I cut  the rough shapes from a scrap of wood after drawing a freehand shape on it. Below you can see 12 heads drawn of the stock ready for cutting. In the next photo you will see  a 1/16" hole on the back of each head where the pin will go on the flat back side.  I then cut the side of the head shapes on the vertical plane. Next I roughly shape the portion that will form the joint with the wooden ball.  After sanding a flat on the ball directly opposite the other side, as shown in the third photo, I then glue the partially shaped head on the thorax. I do this simply so I will have something to hang onto to while I finish  the shaping of the rest of the head. Now just finish shaping a little flat area on the upper side of the face for the eyes. finish sanding the head and move on!

Head shapes drawn on stock.

Pin holes drilled before next cut.

Sand a flat opposite to abdomen.

Below you will see now I have 12 bee bodies, roughly shaped and ready for a final sand.  The two assemblies in the bottom right of the photo are the bees that will be placed into the nest, one facing out, and one facing in. The cylinder sections of these are so there is a good gluing surface for inside the comb. For all the others you will see I drilled a 1/16" hole in the bottom of the thorax , where I will insert a short brass rod to use as a mounting post. 

My collection of 12 bees takes shape.

Holes in the bellies for mounting!

The next blog post will be about adding the fine brass wire that be the legs, stinger and antennae of the bees. I prefer  to attach these pieces prior to painting.

​While you may not be in the market for a swarm of small bees,I hope you find it interesting to observe the techniques I use to make this small "bit of bling" for my project.