Post 24 in an ongoing series describing the design and construction of a kabukimon, a type of Japanese gate. Post 1 in this series can be found here if you’d like to start at the beginning. Each post links to the next at the bottom of the page.
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It was Christmas all over again today as the Japanese bronze hardware arrived:
This shipment is complete save for the decorative hinge plates, or hassō kanamono, which are being custom made and will arrive in a few weeks.
Here is one of the main door hinges along with associated hardware:
All the hardware is solid bronze, and the patination I chose gives the look of lightly rusted iron.
Here we have a few goodies – on the left is the door lock mechanism, then moving to the right we have a drawbar support, a door hook, and the door lock plates:
The door lock plates were fairly expensive, and boy are they nice!:
Everything looks like it will work for the side door, which is 50mm thick:
Another view:
This is the decorative cap for the drawbar (kan-nuki) – one of these will be fitted at each end of the stick:
A closer look at the drawbar support- there are four of these:
Checking that the two parts will work together – looks good:
There is only one company in Japan making bronze temple hardware, and they were very good to deal with. Hopefully I will have the opportunity again to avail myself of their services at some point in the future.
All for now – thanks for visiting. On to post 25
What company makes that sort of hardware?
Matt B. Plant City, Fl
Matt,
The company is called 'Eight'.
Thanks for your question.
~C
Very nice!
Hi Chris!
The gateway is looking great; it's interesting to see things repaired instead of replacing them as this is a rarity in our culture! One question- why did you opt for bronze, patina'd to look like iron instead of just using iron?
Cole – thanks!
~C
Joshua,
thanks for the question and comment.
The hardware options, material-wise, essentially boil down to three:
-bronze
-mild steel
-stainless steel.
Stainless steel hardware is only available for certain parts, so I couldn't do a complete package in that material. Mild steel corrodes, as was amply demonstrated on the old gate. It is less expensive than the bronze of course. There is no option for iron as such, wrought or otherwise, though something could be custom fabricated at high cost I imagine.
For the bronze, the choice of finishes was a blued steel finish or the lightly rusted iron look, and I opted for the latter. They want me to match the old gate in various aspects, so that is what I am doing, but by way of using a material that will not corrode, flake, and drip oxide stains down the woodwork as did the mild steel. None of the old mild steel hardware parts were reusable, while the bronze will outlast the gate I'm sure. Seems like the best option.
~C