>I recently acquired a Maxant Series 1700 decapper. It's the type where you
>put a single frame into a holder and press down on a lever to lower the
>frame between two rotating shafts with chains on them. I was told that I
>should change my supers to 9 frame to make this work properly. I have
>uncapped with a hot knife and/or a comb up until now. I have never even
seen
>a decapper of any sort before, so I haven't a clue how to use it and what
to
>watch out for. I would appreciate all the pointers that I can get.
This is the type of chain uncapper that I had bought. I found that 10
frames were to thin, 9 frames to fat for the adjustments.  Also the frame
did not go down between the chains uniformly. one side didn't get decapped
while the other side would be take all of the drawn comb off. I brought it
back to Maxant and they added two guides(may be on the newer models) which
seemed to help center the frames.  It worked on med frames but didn't
travel enough to get the bottome of deep frames.  I found the following
link but never got around to trying these modifications to make it work
with either 9 or 10 frames but they would seem to help, but would also
make the deep frames uncape even less as you would raise the height of the
uncapper's

http://www.beesource.com/plans/unchain.pdf

if this doesn't get you to the correct information I still have the pdf on
disk and can send it to you.

mike bassett N.Y.

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