Screen Play (4)

Step 4 in the tsuitate build.

The next step was to take the master template and make a set of individual templates for the leg and top beam sections. Here’s those pieces after I’ve sliced them out of the sheet of Baltic Birch using my jigsaw:

Then it was a matter of clamping the master template to each secondary template in turn, and using the router with a top-bearing bit to trim the templates to match one another:

Look at that tag-team action there folks, a one-two punch with the sawhorses. We’re talking deluxe set up now!!

Here are the two secondary templates all ready for use:

Next I trimmed the ends of the top beam, in a very particular way which will help with the joinery layout later on:

Here’s the first cut:

And here’s the second:

Then it was time to slice out some waste from the underside of the top beam. First I made some plunge rips with the saw:

Then worked my way further in with a ryōba nokogiri:

That left the piece sufficiently roughed out for the next step:

I then left the piece to sit overnight to let any residual tensions in the wood, which might have been freed up after removing the section of material from the lower side, to work themselves out.

Next day I screwed the template to the pieces and set about routing them to shape, using my router table and a 6-step process with 4 different router bits:

Here’s the two leg sections now complete through the pattern routing:

And then the top beam was complete:

You can see I had a little chunky bit tear out of the lower end of the top beam, but I had configured it so as to leave enough waste material just in case I had a little tear out. So, all is well and all in all, that stage went without a hitch.

Here’s the mid point of the top beam:

Here’s one end of the top beam:

One last picture for today:

My next step will be to mark out the joints at the connections between the legs and top, and then I’ll fabricate a jig to enable me to process the joinery cuts with some precision. I choose to use a combination of router work and chisel work to process these joints.