Screen Play (13)

Today’s work on the tsuitate came late in the day but was nonetheless productive. You’ve reached the 13th installment in this particular build thread

It was time to cut the cross-wise feet, ashi, to shape, a task I had some hesitation about after making the template. You see, I didn’t exactly like the look, now that I had it in front of me in full scale, but couldn’t quite decide how I wanted to change it around. So I slept on it. And slept on it. I nearly entered a coma in fact. Look for me in the next Zombie woodworking movie.

Today the solution came to me, and I decided to reduce the up-sweep at the tip of the foot. This would reduce the fragility of the short grain at the point, and gave it a less, uh, exaggerated appearance. Once I had modified the template accordingly, I used it to trace out the outlines of the feet on the stock.

It was at last time to cut, the first order of business being to trim the pieces to length with my circular saw:

This process required one cut from each side, but the blade is sharp and square to the sole of the saw, so the cuts lined up fairly decently:

Next step was to plane the end grain clean:

I like the end grain shavings, which are like assemblages of wood dust:

Here’s how the end grain on that piece looked afterward:

I repeated the above procedure 4x to complete that phase of cut-out.

Next I did some more roughing-out hacks to reduce the amount of routing required. First I used the circular saw to axe off some material from the top surfaces:

Then I drilled some holes:

And out came the 270mm ryoba for a little ripping and cross-cutting:

The result:

That step also was repeated 4 times, and the resulting rough-cut pieces now looked like this one:

After that, I fastened the template on to the ashi with double stick tape, and using 5 different router bits in my router table and multiple steps, completed the shaping. That went off without a hitch, though caution was needed in a few areas. When in doubt, spray some Camellia oil on it and go slow. Works in the bedroom too – hey, just kidding!

Here’s one of the feet after routing:

And here’s the other one:

Together, they look a little reminiscent of Dutch wooden shoes, which is okay with me as they are the feet after all:

All that remains with these pups is a bit of filing, a touch with the spokeshave and chisel, and they are done. I’m quite pleased with the final form and relieved nothing untoward occurred during the cutting.

Next up will be the lower frame cross-tie, which needs some mortises hacked in there. Then I will turn my attention to the latticework, which will be a little funky and mysterious. Stay tuned and thanks for your visit today. Comments always welcome. –> Drift on over to post 14