Screen Play (7)

Here we are at post seven. I’m building a Japanese freestanding screen, or tsuitate, with a frame of Honduran Mahogany and infill panel of something-to-be-yet-decided.

Cut out continues on the corner joints of the main frame. At this point the frame is not profiled completely, so it is chunkier looking than it will ultimately end up. Oh yeah, Ultra-Slimfast is yet to come!

The male portions of the joint, the central tenon on the legs, is the easier to process for the wedge abutments. A bit of saw and chisel work takes care of it:

Note that the mechi (stub tenons now have been counter-sloped to about 45˚.

Completed trenches for the wedge pins, or shachi sen:

Another view:

The female sides of the joint are the more difficult to deal with, due to the cramped access. Still, it boils down to saw and chisel work:

Let’s put the two halves together to see how things are shaping up:

Don’t be alarmed- the tenons are left long at this point and the side of the pieces hasn’t been fully cut out yet.

Once together, I used a mechanical pencil to trace the positions of the mechi onto the receiving piece:

Another view:

And another view:

Once the scribing was complete, I processed the cuts for the stub tenon mortises:

Here’s one end complete for the mechi hozo:

Standing the frame up now for the first time, like a newborn deer, a little wobbly on it’s feet (not really, but it seems like an evocative image to use!):

The joints now go closer together but the fit is quite tight so I will be using some fitting wedges to draw it fully together later on:

The other end comes to within 1mm of closing, though the alignment of the two pieces is a hair off of 90˚ in this photo:

Then I trimmed the protruding tenons down a little:

That’s all for today folks. I hope you enjoyed your visit today to the Carpentry Way. See you next time! –> on to post 8