Screen Play (17)

Before I get to today’s update on the tsuitate, I thought I’d mention that I’ve been making good progress on Volume III of The Art of Japanese Carpentry Drawing, which is devoted to splicing joints. So far I’ve drawn about a dozen joints, and I’m just getting started. This volume will cover the most useful and important Japanese scarfs and splices, of use to joiners, timber framers, and furniture makers. The joints will be dealt with in a kihon/henka fashion. Kihon (基本) are the standard forms/methods of a thing, and henka (変化) are the variations. Thus on the kanawa-tsugi joint for example, I have one kihon and 6 henka (so far!). I’m trying to plug away at it, drawing a new joint or variation every day, and intend to have the essay available for sale by the late Summer or early Fall. It will probably be 250+ pages. Yes, just on splicing joints. The price will be $40.00 for this volume.

I’ll be following up that with Volume IV, which will be devoted to splayed post work, and I expect that could easily run 125~150 pages. I intend it to be the most complete treatment of that compound joinery issue ever published in any language. Some of it I have already written, however I plan to greatly expand upon my previous work.

Beside that drawing work, I’ve been getting ready for an upcoming presentation of Japanese carpentry and wooden architecture for the Japan Society of Boston. That takes place on June 13th. I’ve also received an invitation to show work at the Fine Furniture Show in Rhode Island, happening on October 22nd or thereabouts. That will be the first show I’ve ever gone to as an exhibitor and have quite a few plans for that percolating away. It’s exciting! This current project may end up in that show unless I sell it before then.

Anyway, here we are at the 17th installment of the Japanese freestanding screen build-up. Previous postings are archived to the right of the page.

I’ve made good progress with the kōshi, subject of the previous couple of posts, and today I decided to finish off the haunched tenon joint that connects the frame uprights with the sill, or lower tie piece, and the two feet. The first task was to knife the shoulders, for which I clamped a large square, or kane-jaku, to the leg, along the plumb reference line, and then sliced along the pencil line:

Then I kerfed the sides of the tenon with my circular saw:

Here we are after both tenons are roughed out:

Then I routed the surfaces clean, leaving this as the result:

Target thickness for these tenons is 1.25″:

Next I set up the kanejaku again, this time with a paring block at the end so I could trim the shoulders down to the knifed kerfs:

Out comes the tsubaki abura (Camellia oil) and a chisel:

A reasonable start is made:

Since two of the sides of the stick are already template routed and are curvilinear, I can’t readily pare in reference to those faces without getting into another jig build, so I freehand trim to the marks with a chisel, and then shave the area with my shoulder plane:

Every once in a while I check with a straight piece of metal to see how flat the surface of the tenon shoulder is – here you can see a slight gap at the top of the meeting between ruler and wood:

A couple of shavings later, the surface is decked flat:

I very slightly hollow the portion of the shoulder near the root of the tenon:

I do this because the grain of the sill is such that at a dry time of year it could cup outward ever so slightly, and this slight hollowing of the tenon shoulder should keep the fit at the edge of the leg tight throughout the moisture cycle.

Next I chamfer the arrises of the tenon haunch:

Looking nearly done, but there’s another step yet:

These tenons are about 1″ longer than they need to be, so it was time to trim them to the line:

This is the cut surface I get with a general purpose replaceable blade carpentry saw:

I followed up by paring the end grain clean. This tenon is not really exposed to view, as you would have to lay the entire screen on its side and peer at the under-surface of the foot to see it, but I like to be thorough:

End grain paring done, and arrises trimmed:

And here are the two haunched tenons, now complete except for the peg mortises, which I will mark later by direct transfer:

The pegs themselves will be slightly draw-bored, and will be made of Bubinga. The tenons protrude out the bottom of the feet by a couple of millimeters.

Thanks for dropping by today, your comments are most welcome. –> go to post 18