Post 25 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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My large paring slick needed a sharpening – the first step is to remove the handle, then a round through the rocks – my wife was by the shop and it seemed convenient to take a bit of video:
Who is that shaggy freak? Looks like some sort of woodchuck. I guess I could use a make-up and hairdressing assistant for my next on-camera session – huh? Might want to work on making a different fashion statement too I suppose.
I worked my way through three sharpening stones – a green ceramic #1000 to start, followed by a brick-colored ceramic #3000, and then on to my natural stone (a stage not shown). The camera was flashing the ‘low battery’ light so we conserved what we had. At one one point I lift the #1000 stone up in the air by the blade’s bevel, just a bit of senseless showing off, but it does indicate a fairly flat stone and bevel, meeting well enough to produce good stiction.
Well, a new job title could perhaps be: aw, pare (au pair?):
All right, a weak attempt at word play, but what the heck.
Still pretty much clueless on the video work aspect – something I would definitely like to improve in the months ahead. Haven’t I been saying that for a while now? Today I had a go a video editing with iMovie, and, yup, there’s a learning curve there – it did not seem to be a particularly intuitive sort of program to lean. Connecting both the filming and editing tasks was helping my understanding a bit. We certainly could have used better light, however the filming in this case was very much an impromptu sort of thing.
The cut out shown above comprises the rough stage. I generally do a round of rough cutting, and follow up later on after another resharpening, paring out to the line and checking the surfaces for flatness and straightness, etc. Planning to tackle that paring task next time I’m at the shop.
In other news…I acquired a new blade for my 190mm (7.5″) finishing saw – a 90 tooth blade with a slim 1.5mm (0.06″) kerf, made by Sugiyama:
I thought I’d take it for a spin, so to speak, with some crosswise plunges with the saw blade, as step one of excavating the stub tenon mortises on one of the main posts:
My first time using this brand of saw blade – I’m now a convert! The cut left by the Sugiyama blade is very nice in my opinion – check out the cut surface on the stub tenon’s end grain portion:
Sugiyama makes a 1.3mm kerf blade as well, which I think I will have to try out soon. I haven’t had much luck having these thin-kerf Japanese blades properly resharpened around here, so I’m considering sending them back to Japan for such work.
The stub tenon morts now roughed out, but a bit wide of the line yet all around:
These mortises are for the nose piece stub tenons. The inside of the post, which receives the kabuki, has a slightly different stub tenon arrangement.
The other post through the same stage:
You can see one of the large knots parked on the arris of that timber at the upper left of the picture. There are two of them on the same arris and I will need to patch them. An awkward place to repair, especially given the size of the knots.
All for today – thanks for dropping by the Carpentry Way. Next: post 26