Post 42 in an ongoing series describing the design and construction of a kabukimon, a type of Japanese gate. This is a project for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
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The big storm came and went and we got off fairly lightly in Western MA with only 6~8″ of snow. It had remained rather cold however. I declined to look at the thermometer in my shop today, and kept a portable space heater close by.
I spent the morning going over various drawing details at home, and the afternoon in the shop doing layout and cut out. Today’s buzz-sawing and axe work involved what I am calling the wall posts:
I call them ‘wall posts’ simply because they are closest to the concrete garden walls. The post on the left in the view above is framing a fixed panel and has a mud sill at the base, while the post on the right is framing the side door opening. So there are some differences in the joinery arrangements accordingly.
The layout took a while, and after double-checking the layout, I brought out the marking knife and incised the appropriate lines. As I wrapped that up, I thought to myself, “perhaps I should get some sort of knifetime achievement award?”.
Yeah, I know, lame, but I had to try.
Anyway, the post tops will have double hammerhead tenons, and I bucked off half of the waste to start.
I’ll leave the tenoning work for later however.
On to the mortising – the hollow chisel mortiser was fitted with a 15mm bit and I went to town:
Mortise rough cutting complete on the two wall posts:
These mortises are for the header beams.
A while later I had the mortises cleaned up:
A closer view:
The hammerhead portions of the mortises were also completed:
Then the mortises on the bottom of one wall post for the mud sill connection were also done:
The threaded rod mortise on the center of the end grain has been elongated, not by accident fortunately. The elongation will help facilitate assembly later on.
All for today – thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way. Ready for the next one?: Post 43